An unexpected Nobel?

Nobel Peace Prize Committee has made a bizarre choice by handing the award to the European Union.

One of the main reasons to hand out awards is to pick someone controversial and get people arguing about the winner. The Nobel Peace Prize, however, is supposed to be above such sensationalism. Despite the unique stature that the award holds, however, some of its recent choices have been quite baffling. US President Barack Obama was awarded the Peace Prize two years back, despite having achieved very little peaceful, or otherwise, in his short time as president. As time passed and President Obama launched a new war in Libya and upped the ante in Pakistan and Yemen, his status as a Nobel Laureate is ever more ridiculous. Rather than being chastened, though, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has made another bizarre choice by handing the award to the European Union (EU).

The timing of this award is particularly strange. The last few years have not been kind to the EU, with the worldwide economic depression hitting member countries such as Spain and Greece very hard. Austerity measures imposed on them as a price of receiving bailouts from countries such as Germany has sown mistrust and there is even the possibility of the EU struggling to survive as a single economic entity. Awarding the prize to the EU seems to be meant as an inducement for the member countries to stick together, just as awarding it to President Obama was to bind him to follow a path of peace. If the Nobel Peace Prize Committee does indeed believe that to be the case, then it is surely overrating the power of its award.

The official rationale for the prize is that the coming together of the Western European countries prevented the outbreak of another continental war. What the judges seemed not to understand is that it wasn’t the EU which stopped war; rather, it was the cessation of hostilities that allowed the EU to become a reality. In any case, if not going to war is enough to land a Peace Prize, just about every country in the world would be a prime candidate. That is the chief problem with the selection of the EU. There are millions of individuals, like our very own Abdul Sattar Edhi, who were more deserving winners. Instead, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee decided to play politics with an award that has now lost its lustre.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 14^th, 2012.