The Nobel Peace Prize, Germany, Greece and Switzerland

The Nobel Peace Prize is is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel. The other Nobel prizes are awarded in Chemistry, Physics, Physiology or Medicine, and Literature. Since 1901, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded annually to those who have..."done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.". The 2012 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the European Union. The choice has caused a blizzard of criticism. And we can remember other controversial Peace Prize choices - Barak Obama and Yasser Arafat, to name two. For me, one of the problems with the EU as Peace laureate is the anonymity of the winner. Who will remember a face, name or specific world situation to associate with it? Nobody is my guess. Here are a few more of my thoughts: 1. The most often offered reason for giving a Peace Prize to the EU is that it has succeeded in ending European wars, a chronic state in Europe since the Roman armies left 1600 years ago. Perhaps wars were inevitable because of the many ethnic groups forced to be neighbors in a very small space - 350 million people, about the same number as in the US, in a territory much less than half as large. But while they were at war, Europeans did manage to save classical Greek and Roman values and institutions and develop them into what we now call western culture. So, we might well consider making the EU a special world cultural heritage area. But, I digress. War has ceased in Europe since WWII, but how much the Treaty of Rome that set up the first pan-Europe conmercial compact had to do with it is a real puzzle. What put Europe on its feet after WWII was the massive infusion of cash from America via the Marshall Plan. At the same time, the US got its arms around European defenses and military through the creation of NATO. And at the same time, the world came together, for better or worse, in the new United Nations, and Europeans, decimated by two world wars fought largely on their soil in the prior 50 years, were believers in peace through international checks and balances...they are still believers, perhaps more than any other area in the world. So, for me, the Peace Prize could better have been awarded to the UN or to George Marshall's family...or even to NATO, perhaps the worthiest of all if only the Nobel Committee had a little guts. 2. The French-German pact to prevent Germany from again attacking its neighbors is at the heart of the Treaty of Rome. The noble experiment has thus far worked. But if we look at the tension between Greece and Germany today - indeed if we consider Germany's isolated and generally unpopular position as the economic powerhouse of the EU - we may well ask how long the EU will hold together in its present format and whether Germany will finally realize that its current position is untenable for the mid and longer term. The EU is still an experiment. Power-wielding structures are almost non-existent. So, it will be another 50 years before we have the final vote on the EU. 3. While the Peace Prize is an honor and even an incentive for the EU to continue to try to create a truly stable and integrated Europe, my view is that 2012 was too soon. But since the 2012 Peace Prize is history, the least the EU bureaucrats - certainly the most developed of all EU institutions - could have the decency to do is give the million Euro prize money to Greece, which is after all the cradle of Europe. And I urge the Nobel Committee, if it really wants to reward European peacekeepers who work unceasingly for fraternity among nations, to consider the real peacemaker in Europe -- Switzerland.