thesis of your book has that created controversy on the conservative right? >> i have had interesting conversations but liberty university is in academic institution. a community of scholars who follow christ. we've discussed, led debate, the different perspectives that is not widely known outside but it is important to know that. those fellowship believers we disagree. the bottom line we are on the same page with those core values of christ. . .

>> you realize that things take 500 years sometimes to develop and, certainly, the secularization of the western world is one of those things. >> host: living with faith in a nation that was never under god, liberty university professor michael babcock is the author. >> coming up next on book tv, "after words" with guest host jay nordlinger. he discusses his book "peace they say: a history of the nobel peace prize." in it, he presents the many recipients of one of the world's best known and most prestigious awards and shines a spotlight on alfred nobel and discusses many leaders who were overlooked for the prize. he talks with "the wall street journal"'s international editor matt murphy. >> host: jay, it's good to see

you. >> guest: you too. thank you. >> host: why this book? why a book about the peace prize? >> guest: i thought it was a good idea. i hope it is. it's a very interesting subject, i find. i mean, quite apart from my book and its qualities, it's just a plain interesting subject. and i think an author can only mess it up. it gives you, the peace prize gives you an overview of the 20th century because the prize, like the other nobel prizes, begins in 1901. so you march through the first war and the depression, second war, cold war, arab/israeli conflict, environmentalism, war on terrorism, obama, almost everything. this prize has its fingers in many pots. then you have this vast cast of characters, all these laureates and other people who surround the prize. and they're all interesting, at least i found. some people said to me as i was writing the book and the book was lengthening, concentrate on

the interesting ones and skip over the less interesting ones. but they're all interesting, or at least i found. and then the book, rather, the subject makes you confront some of the biggest questions concerning war and peace and freedom and tyranny. and it makes you decide what you believe or what you consider nearest true. so i found it a really rewarding exercise to study the nobel peace prize. it's a juicy subject. regardless of what i've done with it, it's a juicy subject. >> host: yeah. i was struck when you add up all of them, the peace prize is like a rorschach test. and it's usually controversial in any given year, there's usually somebody who's very unhappy about it, but over time almost anybody can find something to like or hate about it. >> guest: we say in goth, every shot pleases someone, and every nobel peace prize selection

pleases someone. >> host: was there a particular impetus with barack obama winning and people saying, what's this about, some moment where something clicked and you said i'd like to look more deeply at this? >> guest: i decided to write a history of the peace prize before obama won. this idea was first suggested to me in 2002 after the prize was announced for jimmy carter. and i thought it was a good idea, and i put it on the back burner until 2009 or so. and then i returned to it. so it is true, i have to be reminded that the incumbent president is a nobel peace laureate. sometimes i forget. [laughter] >> guest: i want to talk about some of the recent events and winners, but i think we should start by going back. can you tell us a little bit about what you learned about alfred nobel and what the original vision for the peace prize was and how it came to be? >> guest: i loved getting to know alfred nobel. i don't know if you found the same, matt. i really enjoyed reading about his life and sketching about his

life in this book. >> host: yeah. he jumps out as one of those sort of quintessential 19th century figures with a lot of different interests and activities and a seemingly bottomless energy and enthusiasm. >> guest: what a talent. what a talent. he was a brilliant chemical engineer and chemist. probably a genius. these things are tough to gauge. he was a brilliant entrepreneur and manager. he presided over an empire of something like 90 factories and facilities. victor hugo called him europe's wealthiest vagabond. he traveled all the time. managing these things. still inventing and corresponding. he must have been one of the most prolific correspondents of his age. he wrote thousands of letters a year. and in fiver of sick or -- five or six or seven tongues, he wrote in the tongue of the recipient. he was a brilliant guy, and i enjoyed reading many of his letters. complicated man. sometimes an optimist, sometimes a dark, dark cynic.

and about 355 patents. his most famous invention is dynamite, but we're told by people who know -- i'm not one who knows -- but we're told by people who know that dynamite is not his most significant invention, but dynamite's the most famous. and there is this myth, always has been, that he established his prize for peace out of guilt over his invention of dynamite. and i think i say in my book that it's hard to know exactly what's in a man's head and heart, but this seems not to be true. it seems that he was quite proud of his achievements in the area of explosives. they built what we call today infrastructure; canals, tunnels, railroads. the central pacific railroad in this country, in fact. he also was a great believer, as you recall from the book, in the power of deterrence, in the ability of terrible weapons to deter war, perhaps even to eliminate war. he was an overbeliever in deterrence. and if he'd seen just a little

of the 20th century, especially the first war, i think his views would have been different as many be people's views were different. he dies in, i think, 1896, and he writes his will, one of the most famous wills ever written, in 1895. and he wills, um, five prizes. if you want me to shut up for a while, i realize i've been monologuing. >> host: no, go ahead, because he is an interesting figure, and your book wrestles a lot with his vision for the peace prize. >> guest: yes. >> host: and how well the vision is served or isn't served. that's one of the real dominant themes of the book, i think. >> guest: well, i found an american would think this, that the will is kind of like the u.s. constitution. [laughter] there are people who interpret it strictly, strict instructionists, and there are people who are really loose about it. it's a living document, it's a vessel that we fill with our own thoughts and with the times and so on.

so the will has often been ignored and now and then followed. but he establishes the five prizes, and in his order they are physics -- i always thought it should have started with chemistry, his specialty. but it starts with physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, as he puts it, literature and peace. and what's missing there is economics. it's an add-on from the late 1960s. it was established by the central bank of sweden, and its formal name is i think something like the central bank of sweden prize, economic science in memory of alfred nobel. they don't mind if you and i call it a nobel prize. they're happy not to correct us, i think. but informally it's not a nobel prize, it's something else. but in any case, alfred nobel established those five prizes and the last for peace, and he wants the prize to be given principally for those who figure the cause of fraternity between nations. that's his signal phrase in the will regarding the peace prize,

fraternity between nations. also he wants all the prizes to be awarded for work done during the preceding year. this was a surprise to me. i always thought the nobel prizes were lifetime achievement awards or golden handshakes at the end of an illustrious career. >> host: well, i think if i didn't want do the math, but i think probably no more than ten or a dozen of the winners as you write about them probably actually fulfill the specific criteria that nobel laid out. >> guest: one could easily account, and i did not, but i think that's true. >> host: well, pretty quickly, there's one other element i think you should talk about is there's a kind of norwegian --ness at the hart of the peace prize and the time when the peace prize was created. so can you talk about that a little bit? there is a very special quality from norway that, i think, informs the peace prize. all the nobels really. >> guest: yes.

well, he has, alfred nobel has these five prizes, and he gives four of them to swieden, to swedish bodies to minister. he did most of his growing up in st. partyers burg, but he was -- petersburg but he was swedish. very much a universal man but also a swedish patriot. and he gives four of the prizes to sweden and the fifth one to norway. he asks the norwegian parliament to elect a committee of five to administer this peace prize. and he doesn't say in his will that the five committee members must be norwegian. and there is a debate about this in norway in the very beginning, in 1900, 1901, 1902, should we have an all-norwegian panel or a national panel? arguments on either side. but since day one it's been an all-norwegian panel, and i say some of my norwegian friends don't like when i say this very much, but i think one could say that the norwegian people elect the legislature, the legislature

elects the know pell committee -- nobel committee. therefore, the nobel peace prize is a reflection of the norwegian people and their political culture. >> and how do you describe that culture? >> guest: social democratic mainly, isn't it? they're very strongly social democratic, collectivist country in which the phrase social solidarity is very important. they're not, um, reds, they're not commies. they may be a little pink, certainly by american standards. there is one reaganite party in norway now called the progress party. >> host: there's kind of a tension, too, that emerges between, um, norway as a small country -- >> guest: yeah. >> host: and it was alive with sweden for a long time -- >> guest: in union, until 1905. >> host: so it also comes across as a funny kind of cos no pollan aspect to norway as a small

country and at the same time a kind of parochialism as a northern, slightly remote country. >> guest: it was a fishing village before. this show won't be seen in norway, will it? [laughter] yeah. the -- believe it or not, you know this, some people may snicker at this, but sweden at the end of is the 19th century, the beginning of the 20th, was a bit of a power. not a great power, but substantial and significant. and norway was not. and so the belief was that norway would be disinterested and pure, above it all, without real geopolitical interests. objective. it's an arbiter of mankind. and like other little nations, it absolutely adores interbe national organizations -- international organization os and places great emphasis on the u.n. as it did to the league of nations, emphasis on the league of nations and also before the league of nations, something called the interparliamentary

union. >> host: and organizations that crop up like the red cross particularly which is, i think, it's won three or four nobels? >> guest: three. >> host: certain organizations that it comes back to as well, particularly in wartime and in certain moments. they seem to have a soft spot for. doctors without borders, i think, won in 1999. >> guest: sure. part of it's psychological. this isn't very -- this is another impolite thing i'll say. international organizations are a way for a very little and powerless country to besome somebody. also i think the norwegians are very keen to check american power. and they and others regard international organizations as checks on -- >> host: do you think it's american power because of something about america, or do you think it's any dominant world power and it's just been america's moment for quite some time? >> guest: probably the latter. probably the latter, yes. certainly since world war ii, been the u.s. >> host: now, i had the

impression when i read the book that you went into it thinking some things about the nobel peace prize, as i suppose we all do, we all have opinions, and we all like to debate it, and that as you reported, some of what you, some of what you thought maybe turned out to be true and then some of it, some of what you learned may have challenged some of your conceptions. so can you talk a little bit about what surprised you about the process of what you learned of the peace prize and where, where you had a particular conception that also turned out to be true? >> uh-huh. many of the laureates i didn't know. many of the laureates were new to me, and i enjoyed getting to know them. i really enjoyed getting to know an early apartheid leader. >> host: right. 1960, i think. >> guest: yes. he was a zulu chief and a dedicated christian and a great man. a strong man and a meek man. i very much enjoyed getting to know him. his kind, he was a practitioner

of nonviolence, an advocate of nonviolence, and his kind went away with the banning of the anc and with its going underground and with the rise of people like mandela. i very much enjoyed getting to know him and many others including a german pacifist, ludwig quidde. some of these pass pacifists, i must say, were quite sense and even stirring and brave. and in my time, in our time the word pacifist has been a bit of a slur. >> host: uh-huh. >> guest: i mean, if you call someone a pacifist, he may well object. >> host: right. >> guest: but certainly before world war ii and very much before world war i if you'd said to someone, hey, you're a pacifist, he might well have said to you, of course i am. i enjoyed getting to know the pacifists. they were wrong, in my judgment. but they weren't monolithic. they were different and had

different views and took different actions. i found peace a very slippery concept. >> host: yeah. >> guest: i have a section in there, a little essay on peace. an abused concept and an elusive concept, what is peace, after all? in we know it's not the mere absence of war. everyone says that. but it's not war either. is war the worst thing in the world? probably not. but it's a nasty, horrible, murderous thing to be avoided if you can. there comes a time to stand and fight. these are all tricky questions, and i guess what i found was that the nobel peace prizes altogether are a mixed bag. a few of the prizes, i think, that are clearly good or clearly bad, um, i think most of the time the nobel committee has had a case or caselet, a bit of a case. even arafat. a lot of people said to me as i

was writing the book and i would tell them what i was doing, writing a history of the nobel peace prize, and they'd kind of wrinkle their face and say, didn't arafat win that? what more do you need to know? there was a committee member who resigned after that award, and i would have been with him, i think. but it's well to remember that arafat did not win the prize alone in 1994. he won it in concert with two israeli statesmen, the prime minister, rabin, and the foreign minister, paris. and the two of them were happy to appear in oslo with arafat, and the foreign minister went out of his way to say that arafat's share in the prize was, quote, fitting, unquote. >> host: so the arafat, the arafat example's an interesting one in the context of your book because what i felt throughout was that you were taking seriously the winners, reading their speeches, listening to their words, trying to see their

views, and then along the way you mentioned the pacifists. you were pretty open-minded about little discoveries about people even if you disagreed with them. and one of the things that i think the strongest thing in the book is what you just alluded to, this wrestling with peace, what does peace mean. that's been there since almost the beginning of what alfred nobel put in his will. >> guest: yeah. >> host: and what does sort of jump out is this interesting, ongoing discussion and debate. even on the nobel committee, there are years where they come out and talk about a candidate and you think as a reader, boy, they got it wrong. and the next year the same people give a stirring speech and address. >> guest: yes, that's right. that's right. and in my view, some of the laureateses turn lousy after they win. [laughter] that kind of activism. but they weren't awarded for that. take linus pauling. a genius of a chemist. terrible --

[inaudible] certainly a fellow traveler. great supporter of the soviet union, apologist for the soviet union. he won not just the nobel peace prize, but the lenin peace prize in the soviet government which began life as the stalin peace prize. and he said that the prize from the soviets meant more to him than the prize from the norwegians, but he first won the chemistry prize which was clearly deserved. he won the peace prize for his advocacy of a nuclear test ban which, after all, was signed by president kennedy and other cold warriors. so what'd he do with that? i think pauling's political life was what was that prize? maybe not so much. >> host: i want to talk about some of the nobel winners. just before i do, i want to come back to something that you started to speak about which was the notion of peace. and the wrestling with that. how do you see the concept in terms of you have an essay where you talk about peace, and it is

a slippery concept, and it's, the prizes move well beyond the boundaries that alfred nobel laid down. did you come out of the experience of this thinking that that kind of fluidity and flexibility was good, or do you think that there's a certain different guideline or way to think about peace that is more useful? i mean, how do you see -- what is peace from your view? >> uh-huh. there's political peace or national peace or world peace. there's individual peace or spiritual peace. margaret thatcher liked to talk about peace with freedom and justice. the soviets were very big on the word "peace." they were the peace-loving nations, they and their bloc. the west called themselves the freedom-loving nations. the soviets named their space station mir, which means peace. the peace that comes with absolute submission to the party and state.

that's a kind of peace, stability, dictatorial stability. not our kind of peace. we think more about peace with freedom. and bill buckley said that sometimes, a little bit embarrassing, but sometimes the biggest concepts can be boiled down to embarrassing bumper sticker language. >> host: right. >> guest: better red than dead. the new hampshire license plate says live free or die. okay, but how many are willing to follow that? are we all bravehearts? when do you stand and fight and reach the commendation? these were all tough questions. i, um, i'm very aware if people talk about peace. we have that phrase from jer my yarks peace, peace, there is no peace. and you may remember that stinging criticism that tony blair made. he was going off to do some diplomacy in the arab/israeli conflict, and he said to george w. bush before he left, now, if

i win the nobel peace prize, you'll know i fail bed. failed. even i am not hard on the committee. >> host: you kind of suspect tony blair wouldn't have minded if he won the nobel peace prize. [laughter] >> guest: i don't think he would have turned it down. someone like me, and i'm a reagan conservative, some like me can think, you know, listen to peaceniks and what mcarthur called peace quacks, a joke, a forest, a snare in the delusion, a crock. but real peace isn't. we're not very far in new york from grant's tomb. you know, they joke about grant's tomb, who's buried in the tomb. and it walks by and says, let there be peace. war killed over 600,000 people, americans.

and the population wasn't that large at the time. just think of it, the carnage. and, um, i think war is necessary and just and right every now and then, but there's nothing like true peace. i quote in my book, i love this line from orwell, it comes from one of his novels, "coming up for air." before the war, um, when there was peace, it was summer all the year round. if you can get peace, you've really gotten something. but the question is, what -- thatcher used to say, yeah, yeah, you guys talk about peace, but whose peace? po land's? dull gaer ya's? the peace of the grave? these are tough questions. >> host: let's talk about some of the winners, and that should give us a chance to reflect more on some of them. um, i pulled out some of the ones that struck me -- >> guest: who do you like? >> host: well -- >> guest: who would you enjoy getting to know, if i may can? >> host: well, one of the ones i

wanted to ask you about who's probably all but forgotten is carl von e si sky jeff sky. i think 1935. i believe, if i'm not mistaken, a decade in which a couple of nobels were skipped be it during the depression. it used to be much more common to not award a peace prize, and there are many decades in which one, two even three years were skipped. >> guest: you are right. now it comes every year like christmas. [laughter] >> host: for somebody, anyway. >> guest: yeah. >> host: but he stood out as a fairly compelling figure, and -- >> guest: one of the bravest men of his time, as far as i'm concerned. >> host: yeah. talk about him a little bit. did you know him at all before you started research on the book? >> guest: only vaguely. only vaguely. he was a german journal exist be pacifist. he was jailed even before the rise of the nazis for criticizing german rearmament,

for german violations of the versailles treaty. but he was free and walking around in 1933 when the nazis took power or were elected to power, and they arrested him right after the reichstag fire. and they put him into concentration camps, prisons and concentration camps. they torture him, they demand that he renounce his principles, he refuses. they torture him almost to death. there was a campaign especially by german nobel laureates in this all the fields to get him the peace prize. they wanted him to have the peace prize for a few reasons. first, they thought it might save his life. second, they wanted to ohioan -- this was the phrase at the time -- the other germany, the better germany. and they did give him the peace prize in the year 1936 for 1935, and i think goebbels went to si

jeff sky and told him to refuse it, he told him to stuff it. he died in a sanitarium. they gave him better quarters, but he died in 1938, i think. and, um, he was a gutty guy, and it was a gutsy decision of the nobel committee because germany was threatening the norwegian government if he got this prize, it'd be very bad for norway. and norway had stayed neutral in the first world war, and they were hoping to stay neutral in the second if there was to be one. sweden was very cross with the norwegians for doing this because it rocked sweden's boat too. and hitler and his government forbade germans to accept any nobel prize in any field, and they created their own prize as a substitute nobel. and for the duration of the like, those prizes were in place. >> i believe the first, i think, of three times when that was done because the soviet did it, and i think the chinese have just started doing it since

2010, i believe. >> guest: you are right. you are dead right. [laughter] >> host: yeah. he stood out partly because in some senses aside from being a brave individual himself, the selection, it belies some of what we might think about the nobel peace prize because it was a brave pick, as you say, at that time in europe for them to name somebody like that. it's interesting because a couple of years later there's debate about, i think, on the committee about neville chamberlain who did not get it -- >> guest: i think he would have in 1939. if there'd have been a '39 prize, which there wasn't, the prize is traditionally announced the second friday of october. the prize was kind of suspended during the war. but if there'd been a prize for '39, probably neville chamberlain would have received it. he was heavily nominated. is was hitler by a swedish parliamentarian. look, if you're going to nominate the british signatory to the munich pact --

>> host: yeah. they dodged a bullet on that one. >> guest: they were lucky. the nomination of hitler was withdrawn, but chamberlain might very well have received the prize if there had been one for '39. >> host: let me go back a little further to, i think, the first really controversial pick in nobel history which was teddy roosevelt. >> guest: oh. they're still grousing about that one, they're still upset about the prize to t.r.. >> host: well, and it's actually interesting because, again, it does happen in the prize history that somebody like t.r. who's a little more militaristic, i think it's safe to say, or at least pro-strong defense in his personality pops up every once in a while. >> guest: in a blue moon. >> host: tell me about his nobel and why it upset so many people. >> guest: i can quote "the new york times" who said a broad smile surely illuminated the face of the globe when this prize for peace was given to the most warlike citizen of the united states, said the new "thw

york times." oh, they were upset. but he had mediated a truce in the russo-japanese war, 1905, it led to the portsmouth treaty signed in september, 1905, in new hampshire. also he was a friend of the arbitration movement, those who wanted international disputes to be settled not by war, but in an international court in holland. he was friendly to this cause. but he was also a very strong believer in deterrence and in his memoirs he wrote that the best thing he did for peace was to send the u.s. battle fleet around the globe. that didn't sit well with some people. but his nobel lecture which he gives after his presidency when he was on a grand tour, world tour or, is majestic and true. it is one of the best meditations on peace i've ever read, frankly. what a writer, t.r. was. i occasionally forget that. >> host: yeah. he was a historian really from his earliest days.

but what stands out about that address? >> guest: he talks, he wrestles with what we were talking about, what is peace, after all? and he says, let it not be an excuse for tyranny. that sort of thing. >> host: he's also the first, as you said i think, the first real peace through strength figure in the nobel's history which -- >> guest: well, there have been just a handful really. >> host: yeah. >> guest: general marshall in 1953. >> host: another very interesting one which i wanted to talk about, and actually one i think you say was pretty -- at that time in europe, he was an extremely popular figure. >> guest: yes. >> host: and there wasn't much debate about that although his speech was an interesting speech too. >> guest: well, he won -- you and i think his great creation to peace was the defeat of nazis. [laughter] he didn't win for that. he won for the marshall plan. as he was the only one not to call it. he called it by its formal name, the european recover plan. that's what he won for.

the same day winston churchill was honored in stockholm with the literature prize, not the peace prize. but marshall gives a most unusual nobel lecture. probably the nobel lecture least like a nobel lecture. he says that disarmament and demobilization and demille tryization have been disasters for his country and for other democracies. we were back on our heels before world war ii, and we're back on our heels again unprepared for korea, and he said, basically in much better language than mine, it's soldiers like me who have to clean up after people like you; officers like me who have to send young men to die because we weren't properly defended. because we were naked under our enemies. and so that's not the kind of thing they're use today hear anything oslo. and he gives, the prize was controversial because he'd been, after all, chief of staff for the army. >> host: right. >> guest: he gives a very, very thoughtful and, to me, common

sense call speech. >> host: it was controversial, you say, but he was also a very popular figure. >> guest: he was beloved in europe. when i say controversial, what do i mean? i mean controversial in the what's called in the chattering classes, controversial prize, controversial choice on the left, among academics, among peace prize deslow todays, people revered george shall who, in a way, fed and reconstructed europe. he did some of what herbert hoover did after the first war. hoover was very heavily nominated for the nobel peace prize who never won it. >> host: 1950, a figure who i think was quite prominent then, was that ralph -- >> ralph bunch. >> host: in 1950, was one who stood out. very prominent at the time, not well remembered today, but can you talk about him a bit? >> guest: yeah. i remember his being on a u.s.

postage stamp, um, a couple decades ago, and i was glad to see that. bunch was one of the most impressive men we've known. he's born in 1903 or 1904, i think he himself wasn't sure. black kid, born in detroit, makes his way to l.a., raised by his grandmother really. parents are gone -- parents are dead can, in fact, i think after bunch is about 13. and he went to a white high school, jefferson high, i think, in l.a. he is the sports star and the valedictorian. basketball scholarship to ucla. again a sports star and the valedictorian of ucla. we're talking about a young black-american in the 19 teens and '20s. the black women of l.a. raised a thousand in cash for him to put in his pockets as he goes across the cub to harvard. -- the country to harvard. he's the first black person to earn a ph.d. in political

science in america from any university. he has a master's from harvard as well. he has a flirtation with the left and the hard left, but he rejects them. becomes a u.n. diplomat and, um, presides over truce negotiations between israel, the new state of israel and its arab attackers in 1948-1949. and he wins the nobel peace prize in 1950. the nobel committee was very keen on honoring the new united nations, giving it a boost. and very keen on saying the u.n. shall be the arbiter of disputes. and bunch was the first non-white recipient of the nobel peace prize for those keeping score. >> host: yeah. he jumps out from the pages of the book a little bit, and there are several figures like this, of one who was prominent in his day, not very well remembered today but worth getting to know again and reflecting on him a bit which is, i think, one of

the great things that the book does -- >> guest: smart cookie. made mistakes for sure, but a smart cookie and an all-american. >> host: you talked a little bit about the arafat/rabin/peres award. there's one that may even be more controversial. i think you know what i mean from 1973. >> guest: most controversial nobel prize of any kind ever given. [laughter] >> host: yeah. can you talk about that? that's dr. kissinger and lead up to that one a little bit. >> guest: yeah. well, in january 1973, kissinger, the national security adviser, signed the paris agreement. this is suppose bed to be the truce to the vietnam war. the north immediately violates it, explodes it. but the norwegian nobel committee gives the prize to kissennier, he's now secretary of state in the fall of 197be3. kissinger was, i think, a little

embarrassed -- >> host: yeah. he makes ill liewlingses then and future years to other nobel winners of his own unworthiness. >> guest: yes, i think it made relations with president nixon later bit. peace with honor, as he called it, between the united states and north vietnam. but kissinger gets it, and lei duck toe refuses the prize which is an insult in a way. kissinger doesn't go to collect it, and in 1975 when saigon falls and the treaty is nothing, um, he tries to return the prize, the medal, thediploma and the money. and the norwegians tell him, essentially, the nobel peace prize is not return bl. you earned it for what you did then. this was not contingent on future success. you win it, you win it for work you've already done. and kissinger says in his memoirs that he would have

rather won the nobel peace prize for his so-called shuttle diplomacy in the middle east that he was proud of. the peace prize winner in 1986 telegrams -- were we still doing telegrams then? i can't remember. >> host: telegram or fax, i don't know. >> guest: yeah. and says i was not proud of my own prize, i am proud of yours. >> host: the '73 one is interesting because it created an uproar, particularly the kissinger half of it -- >> guest: tom lehrer says that satire ceased to be possible, became obsolete when henry kissinger won the nobel peat prize. i find it far more shocking that the totalitarian of a dictatorship won a nobel peace prize. but the program was attached to the secretary of state. the foreign minister of liberal democracy. i regard that as a bit weird. >> host: i think what's interesting about that prize, too, is in one sense it's defensible because it hues more closely to the actual parameters

nobel laid out than-many of the others. >> guest: fraternity between nations -- >> host: at a time after which years of vietnam had roiled the nation and there was real hope of relief. but, of course, as you go on to point out just a few years later after the fall of saigon, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people die in vietnam. it's a, goes to a different kind of a peace where there is a unified vietnam, but it's not a peaceful situation at all. so you can also look at that prize, and almost everybody can see something to dislike in that prize. >> i was ip pressed by something i heard vernon walters, the late diplomat and cea man say -- cia man. he said for 12 years in vietnam there was terribly war, he said. bombs rained down on every city, town, village and hamlet in

vietnam. and no one budgeed during this time. the wrong kind of peace to send 6 or 700,000 out into the south china sea on bits of wood or tire, anything that might float, to risk piracy and dehydration, drowning. and it took peace to do that, he said. and i remember that concentrated my mind a bit when i heard that. that it took peace to send those almost a million out into the south china sea fleeing in terror. what kind of peace is that? why is that better than war necessarily, rotten as war is? >> host: it's actually one of the interesting things that the prize does, provoke reflections and thoughts about peace and what we think of peace and over time in some case that as one did. it's still debated and argued about, i think. >> guest: uh-huh.

>> host: another -- the '70s was a busy year for the prize, so there's a couple of other years i want to mention there. one is the '75 -- >> guest: stunning. a noble thing, a great act. >> host: talk about that a little bit. >> guest: well, a leading soviet -- russian, whatever you prefer -- disdealt, a great physicist who threw away his glorious career at the top of the russian scientific heap to speak up for human rights and freedom and dignity. and the norwegian nobel committee gives him the prize in 1975. soviet communism lasted, soviet communism and power was from, what, 1917 to 1991? >> host: 1991, yeah. >> guest: and, of course, there are a great many heroes in this period. dissidents, political prisoners, prisoners of conscience, activists of different kinds and all over the communist world, the soviet bloc certainly.

and there are only two awards given by the norwegians to people of an anti-soviet cause. zack love in 1975 and -- [inaudible] in 1983. those are the only two awards. there were three anti-apartheid awards. but the award to have sack love and the other awards were very important be and had an effect. >> host: i mean, it's interesting, too, because the zack love one stands out as one of the shining prizes, and it also reflects in the context of the peace discussion a different view of what we mean by peace. because in the same way that some of the anti-apartheid ones that you mentioned might, they are essentially, um, not specifically related to fraternity between nations, they are sort of within nations, and they're actually recognizing really prisoners of conscience,

you know, is the term for want of a better one. simply for their moral stance and their forcefulness and their views which has become a popular way to view the peace prize, but it's a little bit different, i think, than nobel might have perceived it. >> guest: yes, i wonder what he would have thought. i've had to ask these questions about what the peace prize should be. i think that the committee should generally follow the will, but that rules out some of the best prizes. that would rule out the prize to influenza, for example. >> host: right. >> guest: and te hold me in an interview without the peace prize, his solidarity cause could never have succeeded. and after we won the peace prize, there was wind in our sails. >> host: that's one of the benefits, right? and they're very aware of that when they sit down to vote this oslo, the peace prize at the right time to the right person can really impact events. >> guest: yes. it can be a weapon. in fact, i learned something

from a book that robert kagan wrote about nicaragua about the sandinistas and that drama. the norwegian nobel committee gives the '97 nobel prize to the president of costa rica. and they tell him privately we're giving you this award to use as a weapon against reagan. because reagan was in disagreement about central america. and arias told bob kagan, reagan was responsible for my prize. so this can be an award with power. some people think that it gave east timor, tiny east timor its freedom, its independence. has it brought down the burmese dictatorship? no, but as san suu kyi is well known. >> host: you could argue that that prize propelled her to a

global presence that she still 21 years later as myanmar seems to be opening up that she's still benefiting from. >> guest: she's been more famous after. same as the dalai lama, i would say, who receives the nobel peace prize in 1989. what has it taupe for tibet? -- done for tibet? but people know the cause. they know the dalai lama personally, and the nobel peace prize is not solely responsible for that, but it has helped, i'm sure. >> host: well, it got under the skin of the chinese and stayed there, i think, after that. [laughter] >> guest: yes. >> host: um, there are a lot of people to talk about, and we could talk for hours, but i want to go, um, a little bit to the last decade because interestingly, some of the -- >> guest: anti-bush nobels. >> host: rightment some of the most controversial nobels. there's the political element, as you alluded, and i think you get into this in the book, the definition of peace chawpg changes again over the last ten

years with some of the prizes, and i'm thinking of al gore's prize particularly. talk about the last decade's worth of nobels because you spent a lot of time on them. we can save barack obama until -- talk about the bush years. >> guest: well, what have we got? 2001, right after 9/11, war is announced in october, the prize goes to the united nations and its-then secretary general, kofi annan. the centennial was 2001, and it was anathema for the nobel committee to admire the u.n. but they were also saying don't you dare go it alone. everything go through the u.n. that was a message at that peace prize. and i think the chairman in his -- >> host: you know that? >> guest: the chairman was pretty explicit in his so-called presentation speech that he gave at the prize ceremony, yes. and he was very explicit the

next year when the prize goes to jimmy carter. and when the chairman announces the prize to carter, he says this prize is intended not just as a personal award for mr. carter, but as a kick in the leg to the american administration and all who follow that line. and kick in the leg is an expression that we learned, it's a norwegian way of saying slap in the face or poke in the eye. so that was carter. 2003, that's the iranian human rights lawyer. 2004, the kenyan environmentalist. 2005 -- >> host: well, and let's stop on 2004 for one second, we'll get back with al gore. but environmental, the first environmentalist -- >> guest: the nobel goes green. >> host: right, right. and a little bit -- controversial a little bit in the sense of bringing environmentalism into the con cement of peace, controversial for some people anyway. >> guest: that's right. environmentalism was on the

rise. he was also honored, i don't believe there'd ever been a black woman. and the know well chairman -- nobel chairman said this is meant to honor the women of africa as well. she launch add tree-planting movement, a woman formidable woman, a woman of talent. she came over to the united states to study in the same program as barack obama sr.. >> host: uh-huh. >> guest: from kenya. that's right. and, um, there have been other quasienvironmental nobels. what do you do with the award to norman borlaug, for example? the great agone? and to orr who's the first leader of the fao. do i have those initials right? food and ago organization of the u.n. >> host: i think that's right. >> guest: yeah. but maybe 2004 was the first explicitly green in the contemporary sense award. '05, the international atomic energy agency and it

then-director, el mohamed el bare day. people wondered, is this another kick in the leg? it was, seems pretty clear. 2006, mohamed you niche, he's the microlender. this was off the beaten path of the nobel peace prize. >> host: that was one, i think, president clinton had lobbied very, very hard for him, and he had a lot of sort of institutional support out there. >> guest: yes. he was always advocating the peace prize for ewe thinks, and i think the nobel chairman says, now bill clinton can get off our back. [laughter] we've done it. by the way, clinton seems to be one of the few top democrats these days not to be a nobel peace laureate. they've given it to carter, gore and obama -- >> host: well, neither clinton. >> guest: well, that's -- well, there you go can. yeah, yeah. trying to think if relatives have won the peace prize. i don't think so. i'll have to go back.

>> host: well -- >> guest: madam coury as we used to call her? the first with her husband. >> host: i'm trying to think about -- i can't remember the part of the founding ethos who won in the '50s, i think, wife of one of the earlier, widow of -- >> guest: are we thinking of alvin -- >> host: right, right, right. >> guest: one of the first economic prizes. yeah. >> host: i should have remembered the name. >> guest: that's right. >> host: al gore -- >> guest: ralph bunch worked under them on the american project when bunch was a young scholar. sorry. >> host: go on to al gore because that's definitely among the most controversial. >> guest: well, just as a little aside or a piece of trivia, the subtitle of my book is, um, i think the history of the world's most famous and controversial prize. and i think pretty clearly it's the most controversial prize.

but this business of fame, the most famous, that may be a bit of a fudge. because it could be tied with or maybe a little surpassed by the oscar. i'm not sure how you'd measure this on a worldwide basis. i think they're probably about tied. and one man in one year, 2007, wins both awards. that was al gore. an amazing thing. almost surely it'll never happen again. and i say if you're going to lose the presidency in such a hard way, it's some compensation to win the world's -- arguably, the two most famous prizes in a single year. and he says, essentially, this in his nobel lecture, that the nobel peace prize certainly has come as a kind of balm following that extraordinary presidential episode in 2000. but, yes, the global warming campaign was, i would say, at its ape in 2007. i think it looked a little less good after with climategate and all of that, and i think they might have been lucky to win when they won. but win it they did in 2007.

>> host: do you think, um, in the history of the nobels when you look at some of these controversial ones from the last decades, and we'll talk about president obama in just a minute, but do you think that there's been a real shift in how they think of the peace prize in oslo in the last decade versus the first 100 years? or are such, are some of these just sort of within the tradition of the prize going back and forth? >> guest: there's always, there's some evolution. i think that the norwegian nobel committee is subject to a certain trendiness, is vulnerable to fashion, what's hot now, what's cool now and that global warming was very cool -- no joke intended -- in 2007. and, um, the 2008 award was a little bit more traditional. it was given to a finnish troubleshooter, a u.n. diplomat. but some people have said that the committee should be aware

celebrity awards, celebrity selections. there have been a number of celebrities in oslo in recent years with obama being maybe the biggest. >> host: yeah. >> guest: but the committee likes to say or there are many be paths to peace, and so it's given to diplomats and given to humanitarians, mother teresa; microlenders, global warning campaigners, arafat. different paths to peace. and they almost always have a case. i think the global warming award was really my own view of gore and the intergovernmental panel on climate change. i think that award's probably a little far afield for the nobel peace prize. it's such a departure from the will that i'm not sure is defensible. but it's their award. the five norwegians on the committee determine the award, and the rest of us are just spectators who peck at it. >> host: what did you learn about the obama prize in the course of writing the book?

>> guest: when? >> host: what did you learn about it. did you -- >> guest: i'll tell you something that's not in the book this directly. i think it's a little oblique in the book. after obama was announced, someone in norway very familiar with all of this said to me, you know why they gave him the prize? let's remember now that barack obama's now in a dog fight -- maybe that's not the right word given recent events -- for the presidency. and in 2009 he was at rock star heights. you know, the great messianic figure around the globe. and so this guy tells me after award was announced, do you know why they gave him the award? they just wanted him to come to oslo. they had this bauble to give, and he's the world's great rock star, the number one figure. how do we bring the u.s. president, president obama, to our, to our remote, icy little capital? well, we've got the nobel peace prize to give him. [laughter] and the committee just wallet today bask in his glory. well, the committee chairman could boost him in europe to

have obama as the winner. so, matt, i hear this one fellow say this, and i think to myself, that's ridiculous. just nonsense. i hear it from a second norwegian. and a ninth and a fifteenth and a twenty-fifth. i'm in norway, and i discover that whether it's true or not, everyone thinks it. everyone thinks it. i don't know. i think that obama is a person after the norwegian nobel committee's own heart. i think they view him as sharing a world view, they consider him a kind of political or philosophical soul mate, a fellow social democrat. i think george w. bush was a president out of their nightmares. barack obama's a president out of their fondest dreams. i think i say in the book if nobel committee could design a president from scratch, he would turn out like obama. so it was a bit of a natural. and from their point of view it was a way of saying, ding dong,

the witch is dead. that rotten george w. bush is no longer in the oval office. there's this wonderful new guy, we are blessing a new day. >> host: and yet he comes across as you recount the episode as maybe a little embarrassed about the whole thing? >> guest: he seemed so to me, didn't he? >> host: yeah. >> guest: didn't he seem a little sheepish when he first came out of the white house? he said something like, well, this has been an interesting morning. he handled it very graciously, obama did. i think he was in an awkward spot. i always assumed it was a politically awkward or position for him to be in. >> guest: yeah. >> host: and throughout his visit to oslo and accepting of the prize, i think he was -- he tried hard to be modest, and actually in his speech he hearkens back a bit more perhaps than people were expecting to some of that peace through strength theme. >> guest: yes. yes, he did that. that's exactly right. he did give the iraq war the back of his hand. he didn't even use the word iraq, he said something like one is a war that's winding down,

and then he defended the afghan war quite strongly. and he also said that the peace and security of europe have been, have been supported by the blood of the american soldier. things like that. george marshall-like things. it was one of his more, i would say, hawkish addresses. that's true. >> host: um, we're coming close to the end, so i want to ask you in the biggest sense is the peace prize a good idea? did you come away from the book thinking the peace prize make sense, adds to the world for all of its flaws or that if it went away tomorrow, it wouldn't matter? >> guest: you've put your fipg beer on an important question, and it's one i forced myself to answer in the afterword of my book. i figuredded i owedded it to the readers. and by the way, i hope there's enough information in this book to allow readers to make up their own minds about the nobel peace prize. i give my opinion now and then -- more than now and then, but also i hope enough facts so people can make up their own

minds. i, you may remember this story. i was in a sculpture park in oslo, and i with us buying a book from a vendor. and because i had kind of my reporter's hat on, i asked him what do you think of the nobel peaz prize? and he first answered as a author wee january citizen, and he said, well, it put norway on the map. then he said i often don't agree with decisions of the committee, but i think it's probably good to have one prize for peace amid so many prizes for so many other things. and i agree. genuine peace is a wonderful thing. and if someone can effect fraternity between nations, that someone deserves a prize, even one worth $1.5 million which the nobel prizes are worth today. it's just this question of what is peace and who deserves -- what is peace, and who deserves to be crowned a champion of peace and not just a champion of peace, but the world's foremost? we all have our own opinions, and someone's got to decide, and you and i might think we could do better, but it's -- as the british say, in the gift of

these five norwegians. >> host: i think you're very generous about the process because it seems clear even when you disagree, at times strongly, with the choice yousome to respect the -- you seem to respect the process and the fact that that discussion is going on every year even if sometimes it goes off the rails. >> guest: yes. i think on balance it's worthwhile. on balance. gun to my head if or up to me to continue it or ditch it, i mean, i would continue it, i may regret this later. >> host: there's a parlor game always associated with the peace prize, and we haven't gotten to talk as much parlor game as i would have liked, but i just want to finish by asking you when you look autothere with what you learned of the prize in the world today, who might be out there who's a future be peace prize winner? or should be? whether they are going to be or not? >> guest: well, i refer to the clinton global initiative as nobel bait -- [laughter] but he may have to wait a while because they've given it to american presidents and former

presidents and vice presidents recently, so there may have to be a decent interval. >> host: and they probably don't have to give him a prize to get him to come to oslo. [laughter] >> guest: that's right. i think it would be a wonderful thing if it were given to some cuban figure be, a freedom activist a prisoner of conciens. i doubt -- i think it'll be a cold day you know where when the norwegian committee gives the peace prize to a cuban freedom figure. the great cuban dissident, armando vie daughter as, the author of "against all hope," sometimes called the cuban soldier with some justifiable bitterness, if cuban dictatorship were right-wing instead of left wing, weave we'd have won a prize already. i think that's true, and it would rock that dictatorship. little island, dictatorship's been there since the late '50s