Of the six Nobel prizes awarded annually, two tend to be controversial or loaded with a political or ideological message — the prizes for peace and economics. For instance, the 1973 peace prize was given to Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho and the United States’ Henry Kissinger for participating in negotiations to end one of the bitterest conflicts of the Cold War.

Underlying the award was a grotesque equation of one of the principal architects of America’s war policy with a leader of the Vietnamese resistance. A convincing prima facie case has been made out for trying Dr Kissinger for war crimes. Putting him on a par with a representative of the war’s victims was perverse. Like Jean-Paul Sartre, Tho declined the prize — only the second awardee ever to do so.

The 1978 peace prize was awarded to Egypt’s Anwar Sadaat and Israel’s Menachem Begin for the Camp David peace accords. Here too, the assumption was that the accords would lead to a durable and just peace in the Middle East. Nothing of the sort happened. Israel refused to end the occupation of Palestinian territory and allow the establishment of a Palestinian state. This was, and remains, a precondition for peace. Israel shows no intention of fulfilling it: the Gaza withdrawal will be followed by the consolidation and expansion of West Bank settlements.

Similarly, the economics Nobel has generally been biased in favour of "free-market" scholars although they represent only one of many schools. Thus, a disproportionately large number of neoliberals from the University of Chicago have been awarded the prize, higher than any other university in the world. (Chicago lays claim to an astonishing 78 Nobel laureates — the most of any institution in the US, and globally, second only to Cambridge). Scholars like Amartya Sen, with a rich body of work in welfare economics, social choice theory, and human capabilities and entitlements, are a rare exception to the rule.

The ideological bias in the selection of awardees is largely explained by the composition of the judges. It’s not an accident that the economics award was instituted not by the Swedish Academy of Sciences, but by the Bank of Sweden. This, like many central banks globally, is a bastion of monetary conservatism.

Similarly, the peace prize is decided by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, dominated by Norway’s parliament. This too reflects the preferences and predilections of political leaders in that country. It’s they who decide to privilege one issue/individual as the most significant contribution to peace or harmony in one particular year.

These predilections go beyond differences in subjective assessments. That’s why the peace and economics Nobels are more controversial than the Nobel for literature, where individual subjective likes and dislikes matter a lot.

What’s distressing about this year’s economics and peace Nobels is that they have both gone to individuals and agencies which demonstrate identical traits not quite in conformity with peace. This is particularly unfortunate in respect of the economics prize, which was awarded to Robert Aumann of Israel and Thomas Schelling of the US for having supposedly "enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis".

However, Schelling argued for the use of military force not just to destroy the military capacity of an adversary, but to compel or induce him to behave in a certain way. He applied game theory to the great nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union and argued that the strategic balance would be ensured by a mutually shared ability and willingness to annihilate each other with nuclear weapons. This became the basis for nuclear deterrence, which brought the world to a sorry pass by fuelling history’s worst arms race.

Schelling’s ideas also inspired the US strategy of indiscriminate or "saturation" bombing of North Vietnam to "compel" Ho Chi Minh to stop supporting the Vietcong in the South. This strategy failed but caused a horrifying two million deaths.

Aumann, says a petition originating in Israel, used his analysis to "justify the Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinians". According to the statement, he "characterises the recent evacuation of Israeli settlers from Gaza Strip as ‘expulsion’... Aumann is a veteran member of the far-right think tank, "Professors for a Strong Israel", the first principle of which is: The Land of Israel is the Homeland of the Jewish People: Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and the Golan Heights are integral parts of the Land of Israel..."

"Greater Israel" is a dangerous prescription for occupation and bloodshed, not peace.

The Nobel peace prize awarded to the International Atomic Agency and the its Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei may seem innocuous. But at a time when the Agency’s Board of Governors is trying to corner Iran, it’s not. It carries a negative political significance. ElBaradei is hardly a vigorous, proactive, campaigner for peace. It’s true that he didn’t capitulate to US pressure on Iraq, but one can’t say that he has promoted nuclear disarmament.

The IAEA has failed to promote disarmament, in particular, Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which mandates the nuclear powers to disarm. Rather, it has concentrated on Articles IV and V which aggressively promote civilian nuclear energy. Here’s a contradiction: nuclear power development furnishes the wherewithal for making nuclear weapons too. There’s a tension between Articles IV and VI.

What’s worse, the IAEA doesn’t act as an independent, impartial, multilateral agency with a comprehensive, universal agenda, under which it would inspect the nuclear programmes of all states with equal neutrality. Rather, it exempts the powerful states from inspections, and selectively reserves these for "states of concern" as defined by the US and its allies. The other day, these comprised Iraq and Libya. Today, the term connotes Iran. Israel, Japan, India, Pakistan and Taiwan don’t figure in that list, although they all have undeclared nuclear programmes or weapons.

The IAEA can be nobody’s model. Giving it the Nobel does not honour the cause of peace.

Copyright 2005 Khaleej Times