Peace and the "Peace Prize"

Posted on Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Peace and the "Peace Prize"
by Ben O'Neill | ben.oneill@hotmail.com

The recent Nobel Peace Prize awarded to President Barack Obama has drawn criticism from many commentators, including those who claim that the award is premature — that President Obama has yet to "make his mark" on US foreign policy.[1]

Some have argued that Obama lacks the concrete political achievements of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jimmy Carter, all of whom have previously been awarded the prize.[2] Others go much further, condemning President Obama for his foreign policy and his continuation and expansion of military operations and related war policies.[3]

Whatever the specific positions of the various commentators, debate over Obama's credentials as a champion of peace have been focused almost exclusively on his foreign policy and military operations. To the extent that domestic policies are mentioned at all, they are policies such as domestic surveillance, wiretapping, and other matters associated with the prosecution of war abroad.[4]

This may seem natural to many, since we are used to thinking of peace merely as the absence of full-scale military conflict. But this is a very narrow notion of peace. Real peace is the absence of aggression, whether on an international scale or localized within a small area. Real peace requires not merely the absence of large-scale military conflicts, but also the absence of aggression in domestic affairs concerning individual citizens.

While foreign affairs and military operations are no doubt an important aspect of world peace, fixation solely on these issues concedes a fundamentally statist premise: that peace concerns only those conflicts occurring between governments and other large and militarily powerful entities (such as terrorist groups). Under this view, to use force against a government or paramilitary organization is "war," but to aggress against an unarmed citizen is mere "public policy."

This view is extremely shortsighted and cannot be expected to yield any genuine or lasting peace. The reason is simple: peace is not a concept which should be restricted — or even primarily directed — towards conflicts between governments and other military entities. It applies just as much to domestic conflicts between governments and their own citizens as to conflicts between military powers.

Peace should also not be restricted solely to the prevention of killing. It applies just as much to conflicts involving tax collectors and the appropriation of private property as to conflicts involving helicopter gunships and the killing of people.

Not only is the absence of military conflict insufficient to obtain genuine peace, once one accepts the ideology of statism, military conflict becomes inevitable. As Ludwig von Mises has explained,

Modern civilization is a product of the philosophy of laissez faire. It cannot be preserved under the ideology of government omnipotence.… To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war.[5]

Thus, to be a genuine and effective advocate for peace, one must oppose the initiation of force in principle and in all its manifestations. One must oppose the initiation of force whether it is undertaken on a small or a large scale, and whether it is directed towards the killing of people, other trespasses against their bodies, or the appropriation of their property. In short, one must accept the nonaggression principle and all that it implies in both domestic and foreign policy.

Continue"