Peace for a Peace Prize

Those who have raised questions about the award of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama may have unwittingly done us a tremendous service. It turns out that if we follow Alfred Nobel's criteria none of the previous winners of the Peace Prize really deserved that prize. In his 1895 will Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.” Obama is the 97th individual to receive the Peace Prize, which has been awarded 90 times since 1901, but it is obvious that the award committee has been very liberal in its interpretation of the criteria identified by Alfred Nobel.

Fraternity among nations as well as peace conferences are useful tools in the quest for world peace and no one can seriously doubt that President Obama and other recipients of the Nobel peace prize have to one degree or other demonstrated a commitment to both. But what about standing armies? In the nearly two centuries since Nobel's death fraternity among nations has ebbed and waned, and the impact of peace conferences has been spotty, but standing armies have become larger and more sophisticated.

Maybe President Obama had the correct idea in his response to his nomination. After reminding us that the prize has "also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes," he went on to say:

That is why I've said that I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations and all peoples to confront the common challenges of the 21st century. These challenges won't all be met during my presidency, or even my lifetime. But I know these challenges can be met so long as it's recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone.

Maybe the time has come to recognize as the most urgent challenge of the 21st century the need to reduce and abolish our standing armies.

Standing armies are a drain on the public purse, even when a war is not being fought. Standing armies must be maintained even when they are not fighting. But the billions spent to maintain a standing army could be used to conquer illiteracy and all its ills. Unlike fraternity among nations and peace conferences that can be used in the quest for peace, the abolition of standing armies will only occur after world peace has been achieved. With its granting of the 2009 Peace Prize to President Obama the Nobel Committee may have just called all of us to seriously consider what it will take to get rid of our standing armies.

The first thing to bear in mind is the fact that standing armies, as a deterrent to other humans, are a human invention. There is no equivalent anywhere in nature. The second is that necessity is the mother of invention. Every human invention was made in response to a need. Standing armies are an indication of a lack of trust and national security. A few weeks ago I listened to the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates react to Iran's nuclear buildup. He suggested that Iran may change its posture if they realize that refusing to heed pleas from the global community is not the way to increase their security. He could have mentioned that Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons is a response to a perception that they need to protect themselves from a threat from the outside.

The fact that standing armies were invented by humans indicates that we did not always distrust each other. Before we can get rid of our standing armies we must first get rid of the distrust. To get rid of this distrust we must first understand how we acquired it.

In the next few blogs we will try to understand where we got the idea from that other humans are our enemies, and then propose how we can get rid of it along with the need for standing armies.