A good story from the TNR archive by Peter Beinart argues that there are two kinds of Nobel Peace Prize winners — the diplomats and the dissidents. Among the former are the men who pushed disarmament in the 1920s and 1930s, the men who negotiated the peace in Vietnam in the 1970s and the peace in the Middle East in the 1990s. Needless to say these diplomatic victories have not withstood the test of time. In the other camp are the implacable foes of tyranny and injustice like Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Lech Walesa, and Aung Sun Suu Kyi. Beinart explained:
The Nobel Committee has now awarded the Peace Prize twice since September 11. And with its selections, it has articulated a view of the post-September 11 world. It sees a clash between Islam and the West that must be stopped through negotiated settlements like Locarno, Oslo, and the treaty ending the Vietnam War. This year it chose Carter, an American who uses moral equivalence as a tool for making peace. And last year it chose U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, a diplomat who has placed conflict resolution above human rights in Bosnia, Rwanda, and most recently Iraq. Indeed, if this year’s selection was meant to signal the Nobel Committee’s opposition to a U.S. attack on Baghdad, last year’s presumably signaled the kind of Iraq policy it would prefer: Annan’s short-lived 1998 deal with Saddam Hussein, which emasculated the U.N. inspections regime by effectively placing Iraqi presidential sites out of reach.
The Obama pick certainly seems consistent with that recent history.
