Nobel Peace Prize

In the feature on the Nobel Peace Prize (August 1, Insight) the Norwegian Institution which awards the prize is cast in a noble light. The prize had a highly partisan and patently political slant until the end of the Cold War - anybody who opposed the Soviet block or was a white Christian bringing salvation to the unwashed had more than an average chance of being a Peace laureate. Even fairly recently, in the millennium year, the prize went to Kim Dae-Jung, the South Korean President, later found to have connections with the arms trade. His reward was for being a faithful US ally against North Korea.

It is not generally known that Mahatma Gandhi was not a peace laureate; indeed he was nominated five times but rejected each time because he was found to be not peaceful enough - because a small number of his followers did not renounce violence. But the committee had no problems giving it to General George Marshall (1953) US Chief of Staff. In 1906 the prize had gone to Theodore Roosevelt, one of the most truculent of all US presidents, even according to present standards. In 1912 Elihu Root, the former US Secretary of War, got the prize.

It is now known that the committee vacillated over Nelson Mandela's award for two decades (then made him share it with de Klerk).

In 1973, Henry Kissinger, an avowed advocate of international state-sponsored terrorism, got the prize.

Only once (1961) has the prize been awarded posthumosuly - to Dag Hammarskjold, the UN secretary general who was openly a muscular Christian and an Amerophile. Indeed, his pro-CIA line almost split the UN in the 1950s.

Some people got the prize simply because they were prominent Christians - such as Soederblom (1930), the Archbishop of Upsaala.

It is however true that in the last few years the Norwegian committee is making some effort to redress past travesties - but the prize ought not to have the halo it has in the wider world.