Nobel Prizes for Outlawing War
—Michael Medved
—Michael Medved
The Nobel Peace Prize for President Obama stressed his rhetoric favoring peace and disarmament, but cited no real progress in that direction.
Unfortunately, the Peace Prize has a long history of recognizing good intentions rather than concrete achievements. Eighty years ago, the Nobel Committee awarded three separate prizes in three separate years to architects of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact--a solemn treaty that outlawed war as "an instrument of national policy." Sixty-three nations signed the treaty, including Germany, Japan and Italy. The U.S. Senate approved it as well, by a vote of 85-to-1.
Within 11 years of the treaty going into effect and making war illegal, aggression by several signatory nations plunged the planet into the most destructive conflict in history. Rewarding airy, unenforceable good intentions has been a problem with the Nobel Peace Prize for many years.
