Quote of the week:
“If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.” — Moshe Dayan
A bandwagon is underway urging the selection committee for the Nobel Peace Prize to make Donald Trump its newest Laureate. Some of the President’s harshest critics have joined Trump supporters on this bandwagon, with barely concealed ulterior motives. Hey, if Barack Obama can “earn” Nobel Laureate status by being a paragon of hope, reinforced by one paragraph of a speech at Prague embracing the goal of abolishing nuclear weapons, why not Trump, as well, for scaring the bejeezus out of Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in to go the extra mile to avoid a catastrophic war.
Sometimes even a bull in a china shop deserves kudos, and Trump gets mine in this instance. His bluster and instincts have helped set in motion a chain reaction of events making unlikely the prospects of a preventive U.S. war and pre-emptive strikes against North Korea — at least for now. Just a few months ago, this was a serious topic of right wing commentary. Now the war drums have been silenced. This will remain the case for as long as the leaders of North and South Korea maintain their pas de deux, regardless of Trump’s weather-vaning instincts.
If the Nobel selection committee sees fit to reinforce Korean efforts to reduce tensions while pursuing noble end states, it won’t be for the first time. In 1994, Nobels were awarded to Yasser Arafat as well as Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin. In 1978, Anwar al-Sadat and Menachem Begin were tapped. In 1973 Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were honored. These picks suggest that the Nobel selection committee, which focuses on effort rather than results, might indeed seek to reinforce the pairing of Kim and Moon – assuming they stay paired.
Notably missing in previous pairings are occupants of the White House who helped midwife negotiations between adversaries. Jimmy Carter didn’t receive his well-earned Nobel until 2002 “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” I wouldn’t be surprised if Barack Obama’s premature award in 2009 “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” will be earned in decades to come.
Missing from this list of Nobel Laureates is the tandem of Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, who oversaw negotiations that concluded in 1972 with the SALT I Interim Agreement and the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty. These were historic (and yes, with respect to the Interim Agreement, deeply flawed) accomplishments that established a framework for three decades of nuclear arms control and reductions. Only one of the tandem that subsequently broke the back of the nuclear arms competition – Mikhail Gorbachev – was awarded a Nobel in 1990 “for his leading role in the peace process which today characterizes important parts of the international community.” Ronald Reagan, whose belief in abolition was stronger than any of his predecessors and successors, was snubbed.
Donald Trump will be, too. His hoped-for Nobel might just as well be awarded to the International Olympic Committee, which fortuitously awarded the 2018 Winter Games to the Republic of Korea. While a reluctant Pentagon was updating targeting lists in North Korea, Moon was boldly contemplating a unified Korean team of Olympic athletes.
The ice has thawed quickly. Next steps will be as uncertain and perhaps as unfulfilled as was the case for negotiations to end the Vietnam War and the Arab-Israeli negotiations. Even so, most of us will be content with a cold peace while striving for a peace treaty and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. As previous Nobel Laureates would acknowledge, success can be illusive or stop-and-go, but the dividends of diplomacy in this case are already apparent. As long as Kim and Moon keep talking and take modest steps toward reconciliation, they have made pre-emptive U.S. strikes much harder to contemplate and authorize.