Geir Lundestad Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

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The Nobel Peace Prize

So, it looks to be not a very good time for the search for peace in international politics, which I guess leads us to where you took us a few minutes ago, and that is your present role and your involvement with the Nobel Peace Prize, which everybody has heard of but they may not know the history. So, fill us in. How long has the prize been in existence, how was it established, and who is responsible for its administration?

Alfred Nobel was Swedish. He invented many things, most famously dynamite. He died in 1896 and he left most of his tremendous wealth for these five prizes, the prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine, and literature, awarded in Stockholm. And then he decided that there was to be a fifth prize, the Nobel Prize for Peace, which was to be awarded by a Norwegian committee. He didn't explain why this was to be the arrangement, but this is the way it has been, so the Norwegian Nobel Committee has been awarding the Nobel Peace Prize since 1901. So, we have been doing this now for 104 years.

The responsibility was assumed by a committee of the Norwegian Parliament for many years?

Yes. The Norwegian Nobel Committee is selected by the Norwegian Parliament, reflecting the strength of the various parties in Parliament, and Norwegian politics has been fragmented recently, so there are five members now from five different parties. The members serve six-year terms; they may be re-elected. I'm the Permanent Secretary and I've been permanent for fifteen years now.

What is your role as Permanent Secretary?

The system is based on nominations, so I receive all the nominations for the Peace Prize. I compile the lists, I'm responsible for the studies and the recommendations. I'm not a voting member but I make absolutely certain that all the members know everything they should know and that they have no misconceptions about any of these candidates. This year we had 199 different candidates for the prize, which is the highest number we've had. So, I just try to do my best to enlighten the five members on all these candidates.

It's a very interesting history. With an award like this, whether it's in Berkeley or wherever, there is always the politics of the award in the sense of who is it appropriate to give to, what is the political meaning of this award, and so on. Talk a little about that, because it must be a big part of your role and of the committee's, to navigate a course so the award is well received and is seen as fair, not overly politicized.

It is very difficult to award a prize, and particularly on a global basis. We do not spend much time on definitions of peace, but the definition has, in a way, become clear through the work. We think there are many, many different roads to peace, so we have awarded prizes to the statesmen, the politicians who work at the international level to change international organizations; we have given prizes to those who work to solve regional conflicts; and we have given prizes to the great humanitarians, to the human rights activists, to those who work for arms control and disarmament. Last year we even added the environment as a relevant consideration. So, there are many different roads to peace, and that's why there are many different kinds of laureates.

Let's talk about two of the awards that have been controversial. There was an essay on the Nobel Peace Prize website, which I recommend to everybody, both to see the lists of all the recipients and their biographies, but also, there are several essays there. And of the most controversial, two are President Teddy Roosevelt, the American president, and Karl Von Ossietzky in the thirties. Let's talk about Roosevelt first. Why did he get [the prize], and how do you deal with the problem that he was probably the first embodiment of American imperialism?

Well, let me first of all say that we do not claim a perfect record! I'm quite relaxed about this. There have been some omissions and maybe there are some who did receive the prize who maybe shouldn't have. But on the whole, we claim a solid respectable record.

Roosevelt -- yes, he did receive the prize for his mediation which brought an end to the Russo-Japanese War, which was a significant achievement, and he was also quite interested in arbitration as a way to end international disputes. So, there was that side to Roosevelt. There was the other side, which you mentioned. But frankly, one important explanation for the fact that Roosevelt did receive the prize in 1906 was that Norway had just become an independent country in 1905. At that time, the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee was also Norway's foreign minister. This was ended with the Ossietzky case, that members of the government and members of Parliament later could not be members of the committee. But here you had the foreign minister of Norway being the head of the committee, and he was looking for friends of Norway. And America was obviously there, and Teddy Roosevelt was there, so I think that's part of the backdrop. Ossietzky is maybe the most controversial of all Nobel Peace Prizes, and maybe also the most successful one.

Who was he?

He was a journalist. He wrote against the re-armament of Germany, but what is most important is that he became the symbol of resistance to Adolph Hitler. So, in 1935, the committee decided to award him the prize. Two members left the committee; one was the then-foreign minister. This established the separation between government and committee, because the foreign minister knew that Hitler would become furious, and Hitler did become furious. He issued an order that no German was ever to receive any Nobel Prize, and this made it impossible for three German scientists, later in the thirties, to go to Stockholm to receive their prizes. So, there was a huge, huge controversy about this. But many historians who have written about the prize agree that it was also hugely important that the committee stood up to Hitler. It stood on principle even if this was very controversial.

He was one of many awards over the years where you're honoring someone who takes a courageous stand, a moral stand, within a particular country, but that stand has broader implications for international life. The names that I just picked out in a quick read -- Albert Lutuli, Martin Luther King, Andre Sakharov, and the Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi -- would all be examples of that. Talk a little about that, because in each of those cases almost all of them were successful in changing the world by acting within their own country to change their country.

Yes. Many of these are in the category of human rights. The prize has taken on more and more of a human rights dimension. Well, there was the Ossietzky case, standing up to Hitler, then there was Sakharov and Lech Walesa standing up to the Kremlin, then there was the Dalai Lama standing up to the men in Beijing, Aung San Suu Kyi standing up for human rights in Burma. It's not the purpose of the Norwegian Nobel Committee to irritate as many prominent leaders as possible, but we must never, ever be afraid to stand on principle. This is crucial, and then we will just have to take the consequences, whatever they are. The Norwegian Nobel Committee is not a country. We reflect Norwegian values, but if you want one example of how the committee has a different role from the Norwegian government, the Dalai Lama would be a good example.

In 1988, the Dalai Lama visited Norway but no one wanted to see him because the Chinese were all over the place and said, "No, this is an unfriendly act if you meet with this man." In 1989, which was the year of Tiananmen, the Nobel Committee awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize, and by tradition everybody from the king on down had to see the Dalai Lama. The Chinese became furious, and clearly, if the Norwegian government had decided what the committee should do, would never have given the prize to the Dalai Lama. But the Nobel Committee is an independent committee. We make our decisions and the Norwegian government makes theirs.

Now in the case of honoring statesmen, in the case of Roosevelt, the decree held but in other cases that has not been the case and I guess one gets negative feedback. A case in point where the prize was complimentary to Norway's participation in the Peace Prize -- I'm not saying the committee consulted on that, but I have in mind the award of the Peace Prize to Arafat, Rabin, and Peres for moving into a peace process which the foreign ministry at Oslo had actually set in motion.

Yes. Norway's a small country in population, and Norwegians tend to have the same outlook on international affairs -- with the exception of membership in the EU, and to some extent the Middle East. But you're absolutely right. There had been the Oslo Agreement, and then there were the Nobel Peace Prizes to the three gentlemen you mentioned. The government never, ever tells us anything about what to do, but the Nobel Committee felt this was a very important event and wanted to support this process. Something had been accomplished, and what had been accomplished was mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO, and that was very important. That also helped bring about the change in the Israeli/Jordanian relationship. Unfortunately, events in the Middle East have later become rather negative, but I'm confident that sooner or later, the parties will have to come back to some sort of compromise. Unfortunately, since '94, the Israelis and the Palestinians have drifted somewhat apart. They drifted so much apart, in fact, that of the three Nobel laureates, two of them, Peres and Arafat, did not have a very good relationship, and the third, Rabin, was killed. There were many on both sides who were opposed to compromise, and they still are. But sooner or later, if this is to be resolved, there has to be compromise.

Would it be fair to say that on the one hand, the purpose of the prize is to recognize distinguished individuals who have made choices and taken action that changed the world, but also, on the other hand, the purpose of the award is to recognize people who are trying to change the world, and this process is part of influencing the world to think about the values that they embody?

Yes, I think so. There has to be a basis of achievement, something must have been achieved. In '94, with Arafat, Peres, and Rabin, they had achieved the Oslo Agreement. But frequently you hope there will be more and you use the Peace Prize to promote this process, and sometimes this is very successfully done. We gave the prize to Mandela and de Klerk, and they did conclude the process. Arafat, Peres, and Rabin did not. We gave the prize in '98 to John Hume and David Trimble in Northern Ireland. They had, again, [negotiated] the Good Friday Agreement, very, very significant, and there has been progress later, but they are still not entirely at the goal line, so to speak. So, some would argue this is a bit of a risky business, "Why don't you wait until the process has been entirely completed?" But I'm a professor of history. History never comes to a complete halt, the process is never over. It moves on and on and on.

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