An expatriated Russian named Yakob Smirnoff made a comic reputation a few years ago by capping descriptions of various American situations with his declaration of “What a country!” (“I went to a hotel. They asked if I want a king or a queen in my room! What a country!”) We had fun laughing at his madcap views of American life through his Russian lens.
Yakob’s signature exclamation came to mind around that time when I heard that Al Gore had won the Nobel Prize for Peace. But the country I was thinking of wasn’t the USA. It was Sweden – the real article when it comes to “what a country.” (As my pop used to say, it’s not funny enough to laugh at, but we’re too big to cry.)
Sweden is a far-north Scandinavian country mostly noted for tall blondes, socialism and high quality steel. Also, for the Nobel Prizes awarded each year for achievements in physics, medicine, literature, chemistry and peace.
There is a fundamental irony in the Nobel Peace Prize. Many people today don’t realize that Alfred Nobel – the zillionaire who bequeathed the money for the perpetual funding of the Nobel Prizes, starting in 1901 – had invented modern high explosives. That’s how he became rich. His invention of nitroglycerine produced dynamite – enabling all kinds of civil-engineering projects. It also became the ingredient for twentieth century war munitions – bombs, artillery shells, torpedoes, grenades, etc. So Nobel basically enabled modern warfare – with its tens of millions dead and even more millions wounded and maimed. Whatever he accomplished, peace wasn’t it.
Apologists claim that Nobel so regretted the destruction his invention had spawned that he established the Prizes as compensation. It’s a nice story, except that Nobel died in 1896, and his explosive compound was never used in any wars during his lifetime. Nevertheless, one would think the country that gave us Nobel – who indirectly gave us the munitions of modern warfare – might want to keep a low profile and not call overmuch attention to this.
But one would be wrong. Sweden makes a huge deal every year out of announcing its selections – lionizing the awardees, and bestowing the prizes in a lavish ceremony. Each prize is also now worth over a million bucks, which (as Everett Dirksen used to say) is getting close to “real money.” The 1963 film, The Prize – starring Paul Newman, Edward G. Robinson and Elke Sommer – depicted the charming old-world flavor of the whole shtick. The rest of the world laps this up every year. These are, after all, the greatest scientists, writers, and humanitarians in the world. (Ms. Sommer is definitely worth watching, too.)
Except that lately the Nobel Foundation – which chooses the Nobel Laureates – has become a little silly with some of its Peace Prize selections. The award has always been highly politicized and controversial, but lately it has gone round the bend. The 2001 recipients were the United Nations and Kofi Annan “for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world.” (Say what?) In 2002 Jimmy Carter was Nobel-ized “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” The award to Mr. Carter – he of the anti-Israel posture and financial connections to Arab countries, going back to the 1970s – was widely panned.
Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change received the Peace-Prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” The thing is degenerating into farce. Following the award to Al “Climate-man” Gore, William N. Gaillard of the Arizona Republic wrote:
“This time, the Nobel Committee overdosed on too many King Olaf’s fish balls. Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his misguided solicitude, not his accomplishments. Five years from now, the chicken littles of the environmental movement will become the laughingstock of the civilized world, and we will simply get on with our lives. In the event there is such a thing as ‘global warming,’ man neither caused it nor can he do anything about it. It is just there and we’ll have to deal with it on its terms and not ours.” (Other than that, I think he likes Big Al.)
It was bad enough that Al Gore won an Academy Award for his nonsensical film, An Inconvenient Truth, which otherwise intelligent people actually took seriously. (“Oh, I saw it twice. It’s wonderful!” gushed a respectable looking lady near me in a theater crowd one evening.) The Nobel Prize made Al the Climate Oracle. There was even wild talk of him going for the presidency again. Of course, no one is laughing now. (Laughing about climate-change might be illegal.)
In 2009 the Prize went to Barack Hussein Obama, who had just been elected to the presidency. He had done nothing notable in that office nor in any previous office. Some wags suggested that his immaculately pressed Armani suits had dazzled the award-committee into selecting him. Others said Armani should have been co-recipients of the Peace Prize.
Donald Trump should have been a logical choice for the 2020 Prize because of his creation of the Abraham Accords – the bilateral agreements for Arab-Israeli normalization signed between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and between Israel and Bahrain. Had Mr. Trump been re-elected, the Accords might have ushered in a new era of peace and economic stability across the war-torn Middle East. If that’s not a credential for the Nobel Prize, what is? (Did Mr. Trump’s hair scotch his chances for the Prize? We’ll never know.)
Of course, Joe Biden was a natural candidate for the Nobel Peace Laureate, because of his open border, criminal-release, and transgender policies. I can’t believe they overlooked him. Maybe both he and Mr. Trump were simply “too white.”
Part of the absurdity of the Nobel Peace Prize has to do with Sweden’s history. The state of history-teaching being what it is, students probably know more about Ingrid Bergman’s films than Sweden’s neutrality in both world wars. No bomb ever fell on Swedish territory, and they made a bundle trading with all belligerents during both wars. One of the factors that allowed Sweden to move into high-class socialism was the vast profits it earned during those wars. It’s very advantageous to stay out of a war. (You could ask the Swiss.)
OK, so what? you might say. Doesn’t this simply prove that Swedes stand behind their dedication to peace? No – it simply proves that Swedes are like the Quakers, who take the high ground in the presence of evil and ask, “Can’t we all just get along?” They depend on others getting their hands dirty to rid the world of bad guys, while they strike a righteously non-violent pose.
That’s basically what Sweden has done on the world stage. They knew they would have been toast (probably extra-crispy) had Hitler decided that he wanted all that steel and those blondes for himself. Luckily he didn’t, so the Swedes were able to live the Life of Riley while the rest of Europe and the USA were locked in a death struggle with the Nazis.
Ditto for the scrap with Kaiser Bill and his gang, 1914-’18. Sweden politely stood aside while England, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy and Turkey slugged it out, bankrupted their countries, busted up their empires, and lost 20 million dead trying to settle the hegemony of Europe. This is certainly a way to “give peace a chance.” Unfortunately, not every country has that option. And fortunately, some that have options – like the USA – have contended with evil instead of profiting from it.
All this is to say that I have a small problem with Sweden becoming some kind of authority on “peace.” OK, they’re nice people. They managed to stay out of both wars. They have great-looking blondes. Let’s leave it there. But Al Gore – a Nobel Peace Laureate for his “work” on global warming? And Obama, too? Hoi! (as the Pennsylvania Dutch say). Enough, already.
