You could have knocked me down with a feather when I heard that the European Union was awarded the 2012 Noble Peace Prize.
I must have visited the offices of the European Commission and the European Union scores of times in Brussels during my years of public service in Britain, but never once had I imagined that the entire bloc of nations - boils, warts and all - would be awarded the world's most famous peace prize.
I don't have anything against the EU. I think it was a fabolous idea to bring people and economies of such diverse and war-torn nations together on a single front that hoped to transform an entire continent and make it a second shangri-la. But it has been a bag of mixed results.
The Euro has failed miserably, and it is only the egos of the German Chancellor and the French Prime Minister who refuse to see its failure that's keeping it propped up. I still remember the days after the Euro was introduced and I would visit countries such as Italy or Spain. The people there seemed really angry. Suddenly, everything was costing double, but everyone was still being paid the same.
Anyway, my main grouse against the EU being awarded the Peace Prize is two-fold.
Alfred Noble, who has often been described as the 'merchant of death' doling out the world's most famous peace prize as he invented dyanmite, had instituted the Peace Prize to be given "to the person or society that renders the greatest service to the cause of international fraternity, in the suppression or reduction of standing armies, or in the establishment or furtherance of peace congresses."
Thus there are two problems about awarding the prize to the EU.
When Noble said he wanted to give the prize to a person or a society, he meant just that. He wanted to recognise individual contribution or organisational contribution - the word society referred to charitable and other organisations rather than to society at large. And by no stretch of imagination can the EU be called an organisation - it is at best an entire bloc of nations. One just doesn't award a prize of this magnitude to a whole bloc of countries. It sounds downright stupid. Imagine what they will do next: a prize for SAARC, another glorious one for OPEC, followed by another silly one for NATO or ASEAN.
The second reason - and this is the stronger reason - for not awarding it to the EU is that this is one of the most war-torn regions in the world. Their recent history is full of war, and not peace. The list of wars in the last 40 years in Europe have claimed millions of lives and they show no sign of easing:
1989 Romanian Revolution
1991 Ten-Day War
1991–1992 South Ossetian War of Independence
1991–1993 Georgian Civil War
1991–1995 Croatian War of Independence
1992 War of Transnistria
1992 Ossetian-Ingush conflict
1992–1993 First War in Abkhazia
1992–1995 Bosnian War
1993 Cherbourg incident
1993 Russian constitutional crisis
1994–1996 First Chechen War
1997 Unrest in Albania
1998–1999 Kosovo War
1998–present Dissident Irish Republican campaign
1998 Second War in Abkhazia
1999 Dagestan War
1999–2009 Second Chechen War
1999–2001 Insurgency in the Preševo Valley
2001 Insurgency in the Republic of Macedonia
2002 Perejil Island crisis
2004 Unrest in Kosovo
2004 Adjara crisis
2007–present Civil war in Ingushetia
2008 Unrest in Kosovo
2008 War in South Ossetia
2009–present Insurgency in the North Caucasus
2011–present Kosovo–Serbia border clashes
So here is a whole continent that is now a failed experiement in economics, has the most volatile political landscape in the world, has a list of wars and conflicts in the last 40 years that has led to the loss of millions of lives and the displacement of several more, has certainly not reduced its standing armies (one of the conditions for the Noble Peace Prize), does not seem to have leadership that can lead the region out of their current predicaments, and yet... what does the Noble Committee do? It thinks it can award the world's most famous peace prize to this region beacuse it either did not have the ability to find someone or something more deserving, or it decided to pull wool over everyon'e eyes by becoming as politically correct as anyone can get.
I must have visited the offices of the European Commission and the European Union scores of times in Brussels during my years of public service in Britain, but never once had I imagined that the entire bloc of nations - boils, warts and all - would be awarded the world's most famous peace prize.
I don't have anything against the EU. I think it was a fabolous idea to bring people and economies of such diverse and war-torn nations together on a single front that hoped to transform an entire continent and make it a second shangri-la. But it has been a bag of mixed results.
The Euro has failed miserably, and it is only the egos of the German Chancellor and the French Prime Minister who refuse to see its failure that's keeping it propped up. I still remember the days after the Euro was introduced and I would visit countries such as Italy or Spain. The people there seemed really angry. Suddenly, everything was costing double, but everyone was still being paid the same.
Anyway, my main grouse against the EU being awarded the Peace Prize is two-fold.
Alfred Noble, who has often been described as the 'merchant of death' doling out the world's most famous peace prize as he invented dyanmite, had instituted the Peace Prize to be given "to the person or society that renders the greatest service to the cause of international fraternity, in the suppression or reduction of standing armies, or in the establishment or furtherance of peace congresses."
Thus there are two problems about awarding the prize to the EU.
When Noble said he wanted to give the prize to a person or a society, he meant just that. He wanted to recognise individual contribution or organisational contribution - the word society referred to charitable and other organisations rather than to society at large. And by no stretch of imagination can the EU be called an organisation - it is at best an entire bloc of nations. One just doesn't award a prize of this magnitude to a whole bloc of countries. It sounds downright stupid. Imagine what they will do next: a prize for SAARC, another glorious one for OPEC, followed by another silly one for NATO or ASEAN.
The second reason - and this is the stronger reason - for not awarding it to the EU is that this is one of the most war-torn regions in the world. Their recent history is full of war, and not peace. The list of wars in the last 40 years in Europe have claimed millions of lives and they show no sign of easing:
So here is a whole continent that is now a failed experiement in economics, has the most volatile political landscape in the world, has a list of wars and conflicts in the last 40 years that has led to the loss of millions of lives and the displacement of several more, has certainly not reduced its standing armies (one of the conditions for the Noble Peace Prize), does not seem to have leadership that can lead the region out of their current predicaments, and yet... what does the Noble Committee do? It thinks it can award the world's most famous peace prize to this region beacuse it either did not have the ability to find someone or something more deserving, or it decided to pull wool over everyon'e eyes by becoming as politically correct as anyone can get.
