Nobel Prize: Peace Or Just War

What is the mean­ing of the Nobel Peace Prize?  Alfred Nobel, Stock­holm native and the inven­tor of dyna­mite and other explo­sives was cha­grined that his inven­tions were used in cruel ways. In the late 1800s towards end of his life he ded­i­cated his con­sid­er­able for­tune to those who had made the great­est con­tri­bu­tion to humankind. Each year prizes are awarded for achieve­ments in physics, chem­istry, phys­i­ol­ogy or med­i­cine, lit­er­a­ture, eco­nom­ics and peace.

Two sit­ting Amer­i­can Pres­i­dents Woodrow Wil­son (1919) and ninety years later Barack Obama (2009) have been pre­sented the Nobel peace prize.  Both men believed that they had an over­ar­ch­ing role to move his­tory in a more peace­ful direc­tion.  Wil­son was dis­ap­pointed and died in office.  His League of Nations was crip­pled from non sup­port at home and then burned in the ashes of World War II.  We hope for a bet­ter out­come for Obama.  For­mer Pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter received the prize in 2002, 22 years after he was defeated by Ronald Rea­gan for a sec­ond term. Henry Kissinger accepted the peace prize for nego­ti­at­ing with the Demo­c­ra­tic Repub­lic of Viet Nam (North Viet Nam) in the early 1970s while B52s simul­ta­ne­ous bombed his enemy.  His coun­ter­part Le Duc Tho of North Viet Nam refused to accept the prize.  The war con­tin­ued for two more years after the Paris Peace agree­ments.  Between 1973–1975, another half a mil­lion Viet­namese were killed and wounded, 340,000 of them civilians.

Pres­i­dent Obama’s elo­quent speech accept­ing the Nobel Prize on Dec. 10, Human Rights Day laid out the neces­sity of war and rumi­nated on his nation’s under­stand­ing of just war — “war waged as a last resort, or in self-defence; if the force used is pro­por­tional, and if, when­ever pos­si­ble, civil­ians are spared from vio­lence.”  To his credit he defined what the­o­rists believe is a just war.  He did not iden­tify how his admin­is­tra­tion pur­ports to fine tune war mak­ing to meet the cri­te­ria of a just war in two big wars, Iraq, accord­ing to him a dumb war and Afghanistan, a nec­es­sary conflict.

How will those who tar­get drone attacks, and other expres­sions of air war make cer­tain that no civil­ians are killed?  How will a new chap­ter in just war be writ­ten in the basic train­ing man­u­als of sol­diers prepar­ing for deploy­ment, for inter­ro­ga­tion of the enemy, for treat­ment of cap­tives, and for clean up of mil­i­tary waste?   Can Alfred Nobel’s dyna­mite and its pro­lific off­spring ever be con­trolled?  Will the appar­ent unlim­ited use of U S wealth for mil­i­tary pur­poses bank­rupt its cit­i­zens as once hap­pened in Rome?

For a cen­tury the Nobel Prize for peace has hov­ered in that space between active peace­mak­ing rep­re­sented by mon­u­men­tal efforts towards peace and jus­tice like land mine erad­i­ca­tion, civil rights, or relief efforts, and the work of nations to cre­ate a frame­work that will con­strict war and its effects on civil soci­ety.  The prize was not pri­mar­ily intended to cel­e­brate paci­fist solu­tions to war although peo­ple who ques­tioned all war and vio­lence like Mar­tin Luther King and Jane Addams received the award.  The acknowl­edge­ment of their achieve­ments gives hope.

In his speech Pres­i­dent Obama deftly dis­tanced him­self and his office from paci­fist tra­di­tions as a Pres­i­dent with respon­si­bil­i­ties con­sis­tent with empire must do.  To his credit he did so with­out the nor­mal check­list of charges of ide­al­ism, lack of real­ism and or even naivete, a check­list deeply embed­ded in the pil­lars of lib­eral demo­c­ra­tic think­ing upon whose shoul­ders his politic relies for ide­o­log­i­cal ballast.

Pres­i­dent Obama didn’t tell us if there are any seri­ous nego­ti­a­tions with adver­saries, coali­tions of Pakhtoon vil­lages or Tal­iban groups.  In a part of the world where nego­ti­a­tions have been prac­tised for 3000 years it is hard to believe that some­thing isn’t hap­pen­ing to find an end to armed con­flict.  How is the con­duct of the Afghan-Pakistan war cre­at­ing the con­text for real peace, democ­racy or devel­op­ment?  The peo­ple I talked to in Pak­istan are not sure.  How will his admin­is­tra­tion encour­age or even man­date the mil­i­tary chap­lain corps to become a gen­uine con­science and moral com­pass for  “just com­bat” in the field.  What about the thou­sands of sol­diers who joined the nation’s forces and, in the process of sol­dier­ing, devel­oped a con­sci­en­tious objec­tion to war?  Will they be allowed to get out with­out hav­ing their dig­nity and per­sonal integrity dishonoured?

For many peace peo­ple, church mem­bers and third world nations Obama’s speeches on Afghanistan and the accep­tance of the Nobel prize despite their elo­quence was a time of dis­ap­point­ment.  This was the moment when I real­ized that my long term hope for end­ing the prac­tice of war in say a cen­tury will require harder more focussed work than ever.  I believe I can use this expe­ri­ence as a time to bound for­ward.  The speeches remind me that the Lamb of God with even wider reach in the stretch for jus­tice can over­come the god of empire that imposes chaos and destruc­tion under the guise of demo­c­ra­tic order.

The speeches remind us that fun­da­men­tal­ist preach­ers or pun­dits are teth­ered together with the lib­eral estab­lish­ment on the ques­tion of war.  Both stum­ble through var­i­ous ver­sions of just war ethics as the Preda­tor drones drag us into a scary future.  Above all the speeches remind us of the very lim­ited options that are avail­able to an impe­r­ial Pres­i­dent in mat­ters of peace and war.  This is the moment to pull up our pants, turn off the T V, awaken our imag­i­na­tions, and lis­ten to God’s spirit of com­pas­sion for all human kind, and get on with our work.

Some of us will be called to unex­pected sac­ri­fice of time, career, and life itself.  The goal of a world with­out war is worth all of the sac­ri­fice of a great army of unarmed sol­diers.  This dream of a non­vi­o­lent world may be the only real­is­tic vision now, despite the fact that our lead­ers doff their hats to just war.  The renewal of our spirit will come one step at a time in fresh and even larger ways as our spir­its are awak­ened to the pol­i­tics of renewal and hope, a politic like Jesus him­self, that is never depen­dent upon a pres­i­dent who him­self is often pow­er­less to trans­form an impe­r­ial cul­ture that devours good poli­cies and strong words.

The uni­ver­sal­ity of this season’s mantra, “Peace on Earth Good Will Towards Peo­ple” is a good place to start and it gets the best angels involved. If the mantra is going to bring down the insti­tu­tion of war we bet­ter be pre­pared with dis­ci­pline and arm­fuls of imag­i­na­tion infused with love.  When we are called ide­al­ists we do well to give the real­ist answer, all of cre­ation is groan­ing for some­thing bet­ter.  That is where we will put our energy.  Even elder Alfred Nobel might cheer us on.