Geir Lundestadt, the former secretary to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, has acknowledged that the awarding of that prize to Barack Obama in 2009 was a “mistake,” in that the award “didn’t achieve what [the committee] had hoped for.” I don’t understand Lundestadt’s reasoning. Obama achieved what he was selected to achieve when, on January 20th 2009, he became the first black president of the United States. That the Nobel Peace Prize has lacked any consistency in the promotion of peace and opposition to war is confirmed in such prior laureates as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Cordell Hull (along with the United Nations for which Hull was, perhaps, the prime instigator), Henry Kissinger, and Le Duc Tho (among others). The anti-war demonstrations that flourished during the George W. Bush reign all but disappeared once Obama took office, even though his administration was as committed to warfare as was Bush. Obama’s reign helped to neutralize public opposition to establishment policies, with charges of “racism” awaiting those who dared to hold Obama to the same standard that was applied to George W. Former president, Jimmy Carter, expressed this tactic when he suggested that those who opposed a major Obama program – I believe it was Obamacare – were probably motivated by a resentment of having a black president in the White House.

While a number of champions of peace have, over the years, been awarded this prize, honorees selected from the citadels of political power are lacking in the life-supporting virtues of fostering genuine peaceful systems and thinking. Randolph Bourne reminded us that “war is the health of the state,” and that enjoying a legal monopoly on the use of violence is its indispensable tool. Peace involves more than just the absence of war at a given moment in time.

Given the state of mind of those in power, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see next year’s Nobel Peace Prize awarded, posthumously, to Fidel Castro.

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