The War of Words Over the Nobel Prize

For the European Union, which won a Nobel Peace Prize today, the award is certainly some consolation from the pains of being in debt, even if the choice seems bizarre and – gasp! – political. Not surprisingly, politicians are making no attempt to hide their doubts about the award. And Russia is making no attempt to hide its disgust.

"Apparently, someone decided to curtsey to Brussels," said State Duma deputy Leonid Slutskiy. "To put it mildly, this was unexpected and non-standard," the Russian politician added, arguing that political and economic integration – not peacekeeping – is the EU’s priority. "I would not speak of any major peacekeeping operations under EU coordination."

Here’s how state-owned broadcaster RT chimed in — with an acerbic report about the validity of the Nobel Peace Prize, period.

The first example is perhaps obvious – Obama, who got the prize in 2009 after only a few months in office, and before, notes RT, he “signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law, making it legal to indefinitely detain US citizens,” and created "a secret “kill list" revealed this year by The New York Times, which grants a select few American officials the option to mark perceived national security threats – foreign citizens or otherwise – for assassination.” Adds the RT article: “Ironic, yes, but they never could have known.”

RT raises an interesting point about the Nobel committee’s transparency – there almost isn’t any. (Never mind the irony, given the Russian government’s reputation for building transparency; in 2010, the Kremlin recommended Julian Assange for the Peace Prize.) Of course, the Nobel Committee’s secrecy invites suspicions that politicking and questionable criteria may be influencing the process.

Politics are arguably always inseparable from the Nobel Committee’s choice for most peace-worthy (not to mention many other things), and the economic situation in Europe is one that the committee would find hard to ignore. “This is, in a way, a message to Europe that we should do everything we can and move forward,” said Thorbjen Jagland, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee and a high European Council official.

“We want to remind all Europeans about what we have achieved on this continent and that we should not let it start disintegrating again and getting nationalism and extremism (to) grow on this continent, because we know what that leads to,” Jagland said. “It’s also a clear message to other parts of the world where you have a number of conflicts; this is a good way of solving conflicts, namely getting countries (to) make trade with each other.”

That’s all well and good, but as one possible 2012 Nobel Peace Prize nominee from Russia pointed out, the meaning of the award has been drained. "The award has been depersonalized to such an extent. It has been given to a state, bureaucratic structure," Svetlana Gannushkina, who runs the Civil Assistance Committee, told RT. “This is just laughable.” At least the award didn’t go to the Internet, as some have been lobbying for, or to You (sorry).

While we’re thinking about countries as people, here’s how a study from 2009, by Stefano Braghiroli and Caterina Carta, categorized EU countries according to how Russia sees them:

• On one extreme are the “Eastern divorced” countries of the former Soviet bloc, which nowadays are for the most part hostile to Moscow (Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia).
• On the other are the “loyal wives”, which maintain good relations with Russia (Italy, Austria and Greece).
• In between are the “vigilant critics” (Romania, Slovenia, Sweden, Bulgaria, Hungary and the United Kingdom)
• and the larger group, the “acquiescent partners” (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain).

Some Euroskeptics, as they’re now known, were sure to note that the very existence of the EU as a unified group is in question (just last week, for example, Angela Merkel was met in Athens with pro-Nazi heckles). Not surprisingly, not everyone in the EU is in agreement about the Prize either. Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party, said the 27-nation bloc was creating “violence and division” in eurozone nations like Greece, Spain and Portugal. “The awarding of this prize to the EU brings it into disrepute,” Farage said, according to the AP. “Rather than bring peace and harmony, the EU will cause insurgency and violence.”

Given the EU’s troubles, there’s much chatter about how the prize was politically motivated, an attempt to pat the union on its head (or slap it on its back, as a headline at CNN read). That disunity is an asset, at least when it comes to foreign relations. During a Germany-France-Russia summit in 2010, a professor in Moscow noted that Russia has better relations with certain leaders of some EU countries than with the EU as a whole because the EU has no prospect of a common foreign policy. It also has dim prospects of economic recovery anytime soon. Such was the gist of a report on RT yesterday:

As the Guardian noted, plenty of people on Twitter found irony in the choice (#euroskeptics). And at least one other potential winner (outside chance) expressed his frustration by claiming the award for himself.

John Cusack wins 2012 Nobel Peace Prize yhoo.it/UPDoT0

— John Cusack (@JohnCusackNews) October 12, 2012

The committee’s decision to award the literature prize to the major Chinese writer Mo Yan this week also ferried politics into the Nobel fray, if only because it marks the first time that Beijing has acknowledged that a Chinese citizen had won the prize.

Mo Yan, whose real name is Guan Moye, was a more acceptable choice than previous Chinese awardees because he’s been sure not to openly criticize the Communist Party. In part because Mo worked on a book last year dedicated to the 70th anniversary of a speech given by Mao Zedong, the artist Ai Weiwei criticized the decision. "Giving the award to a writer like this is an insult to humanity and to literature," declared Weiwei to . “It's shameful for the committee to have made this selection which does not live up to the previous quality of literature in the award.”

Russia’s disgust at the Nobel bears echoes from the Soviet days: in 1958, the Russian poet Boris Pasternak turned down his 1958 Nobel Prize over fears of a Kremlin reprisal, leaving the committee to give his award to his son in 1989. But these days China is the most famous and influential critic of the Nobel Committee. The award to novelist and human rights advocate Gao Xingjian in 2000 doesn’t even get a mention in many Chinese books about the prize.

After last year’s Nobel peace prize went to dissident Liu Xiaobo – the first person living in China to be given any Nobel – the Chinese government angrily rejected the award, detained prominent intellectuals and other dissidents, and lobbied a number of countries not to attend the award ceremony. At last year’s event in Stockholm, representatives from many Chinese allies were notably absent: Kazakhstan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Venezuela, Egypt, Sudan, Cuba, Morocco, and Russia. Also absent was Liu himself, who is currently serving an eleven-year jail sentence for "inciting subversion of state power," while his wife, Liu Xia lives under house arrest.

Of course, Russia and China could argue that they dont’ need the Nobel Prizes anyway. Last year, a committee in China awarded its own version, the Confucius Peace Prize, to none other than Vladimir Putin, for his “remarkable enhancement to the military might and political status of Russia.” And Russia has its own version of the Nobel too, ones that come with $3 million awards – three times as large as the Nobel – and they strive to stay as far from politics as possible: they’re just about physics.