The irony of awarding the Nobel Peace Prize ‘where there is no peace’

Published by Daily Mail

Nazi GreeceThe 2012 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the European Union – a political construct designed (we were told) to ameliorate trade and improve our balance of payments, but always known (and openly declared) on the Continent to have been concerned with values, rights and deeper political motives. Of course there was a strong desire to bring to an end a thousand years of turbulence and war between the Frankish and Germanic peoples: the quest for a Teutonic Order has been a long and bloody one. But it’s something of a propaganda distortion to attribute 60 years of peace in Europe to the existence of the EU. What would Alfred Nobel make of this cynical abuse of his legacy?

There’s a certain irony in awarding his prestigious Peace Prize to a union of nations which is presently being ripped apart by fiscal anarchy and economic folly. While the Greeks are burning German flags and Croatians are burning EU flags, Herman Van Rompuy seems to shuffle on obliviously.

Greece Financial Crisis‘The EU is the biggest peace-making institution ever created in world history’, he proclaimed, with a straight face. While Spain teeters on the edge of civil unrest in the worst recession since the 1930s, the talk is once again of revolution. Yet the President of the European Council tells us in his bank-clerk tones that the award is for all European leaders and all European citizens ‘from this generation and the former generations’.

Presumably, ‘all’ excludes one or two popes, the Habsburgs, Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler. But it’s hard to tell in Van Rompuy’s Charlemagne-idolising version of history. For him, two world wars were nothing to do with Germany trying to smash France, crush Poland or march over Britain. They weren’t so much about liberty versus tyranny, autocracy against democracy, or good overcoming evil. They were, he tells us,’European civil wars’ – conflagrations between competing groups within the same European State. Now that those troublesome fractious statelets have been eradicated (even redacted) from our collective consciousness, he assures us that ‘this cannot happen again’.

That’s probably what they said about Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Not to mention Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. If history teaches us anything about religious division, ethnic identity and the will to cultural manifestation, it is that respect across the borders of tribal difference and clan differentiation helps to foster supranational cohesion and preserve the peace. When the global elite architects with their deliberate designs attempt to enforce heterogeneity, an empire is certainly created, but peace invariably destroyed.

Spain riotsYou can only keep an artificial political construct together by repression. In the emerging two-tier Europe, if external pressure is not applied to enforce monetary and fiscal policy, as sure as night follows day we’ll see economic cohesion and budgetary discipline weakened by gigantic centrifugal ruptures. New political movements are emerging all over the EU to contend against the otiose and oppressive order – from the True Fins in Finland to Britain’s UKIP; from LAOS in Greece to Austria’s Freedom Party. The common concerns are with economic failure, mass unemployment, falling living standards, uncontrolled immigration and the erosion of essential national sovereignty. This is the very stuff of civil unrest and the undoubted foundations of past wars.

As debts soar, austerity measures imposed, technocrats installed and democracy suspended, it is amusing to read in the Nobel committee citation that the EU has ‘contributed to the advancement of democracy’. It was never designed by Monnet and Schuman to do anything of the sort. And, indeed, it hasn’t. The EU is fundamentally anti-democratic, and it has to be, because, as Chancellor Merkel explains, ‘The euro is more than a currency because at the end of the day it is about the original idea of a union of peace and of values.’ So, if the people know what’s good for them, they’ll rejoice in their Peace Prize, celebrate their togetherness in Europe, and make sure that that togetherness gets them ever closer together for the sake of world peace.

The nations of Europe are all now peace-loving democracies. This is the principal reason for 60 years of peace in Europe. Democracy, NATO, and mutual respect for ethic difference and cultural differentiation are the best guarantors of peace. And the erosion of any of them will eventually create tensions and conflicts which no number of EU treaty obligations or centrally-imposed diktats could quell.

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3 thoughts on “The irony of awarding the Nobel Peace Prize ‘where there is no peace’

  1. Awarding a peace prize to a quasi fascist Fourth Reich, a reincarnation(in one of its founding fathers own words) of the First Reich that prolonged feudalism in Europe into the 19th century and which produced the second and third feudal and fascist versions during the following two hundred years that led to two world wars is nothing short of mind blowing, rivalling even that of awarding a US president the prize within weeks of gaining office! What ARE they all on in the Nobel commitee over in Norway,have they joined the New World Order? Unless they are trying to rehabilitate Quisling as a saint that is?

  2. I agree that the EU has a right to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize but where we have to look at the EU in its entirety to determine whether it is a true worthy recipient. There are pros and cons in this respect and where the EU did not stop wars in other countries happening when with enough political force it could have done so as the leading economic block in the world. Indeed, it stood back with only rhetoric being heard when the Balkans, Iraq and Afghan wars were intimated/during (prior to military offensives commencing) and where hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died since. Is non-action a part cause and the reason why these deaths happened it has to be asked? That is debatable, but where for an institution like the EU to be awarded the peace prize it has to show first, global leadership in this respect. Indeed, all I have seen over the years in the EU is political intervention backed up by military action and not basically for humanitarian intervention per se, more to do with economic vested-interests. A far better candidate would have been someone or some leader who through their direct actions created human stability and peace I would say. There are not many about but there are a few. But again, if the EU forged a new world order that provided a universal and an equitable future life for humankind, the EU would truly be a peace maker on a global scale. Unfortunately with EU politicians predominantly being interested in singularities privately and not the whole when it comes to Europe, this will never happen. The reason, the usual vested-interests of nations and where this blinkered outlook that is entrenched in nationalism is far more dangerous to the world’s stability than anything else. As global natural resources diminish and those to preserve human life as we know it, major conflicts will ensue unless politicians remove this psyche of self-interested preservation above all else. For we are now moving towards a world that will either exist with humankind at its helm at the end of this century, or will not. It is as simple as that and where we have to find something more important to humans than just the corporate derived wealth of nations – a clear recipe in this century it has to be said for human annihilation and where all wars are economic at their base and nothing else. Time is running out therefore and where our politicians and especially the EU, has to see things as they really are and what future is emerging for us all. Therefore if the EU could forge a new all-encompassing paradigm of human change that was not based upon the accumulation of capital wealth but rather on the premise of preserving the human experience, it would certainly be the front-runner for any peace award whether it was the Nobel Prize or any other. But again, we are dreaming, when our political leaders just see things overridingly from a single perspective of national self-interest even though they are all members of the EU. Change this mindset of deep rooted national monistic values and then the EU would be worthy of the peace prize but where unfortunately presently, universal self-preservation always ultimately prevails. Therefore is the EU worthy – yes for the people it is, but not with the personal and private mandates and mindsets of its leaders I have to say. Consequently, all this has to change for our own good and especially for the long-term socio-economic interests and wellbeing of our very young within the EU now. We have only three decades to change this if the truth be known but where our political leaders are oblivious to this.
    Dr David Hill
    Chief Executive
    World Innovation Foundation
    United Kingdom & Switzerland

  3. We now know, beyond all doubt, that the Nobel Peace Prize is every bit as vile an institution as the Nazi dictatorship the EU has become. There are communities across the EU where people do not even have enough food. Hunger is driving crime in Spain and elsewhere. These Countries may not have been wealthy before, but at least they weren’t starving – they have XBoxes, iPhones and new cars, but no food and no money with wich to buy it. It’s falling apart, and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. Herman Van Rompuy should be put in prison along with all the other eurocrats. They are no better than Hitler and the Third Reich.

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