Given the EU's current crises, both existential and economic, the Nobel committee could have chosen a better moment
Is it right of the Nobel committee to award this year's peace prize to the European Union at a time when the EU is facing the gravest existential crisis of its 55-year history, and when the continent's elected leaders have repeatedly failed to resolve an economic conundrum which is largely of its own devising? No, I don't think it is.
It smacks of bad timing, just as the committee's award of the same prize to Barack Obama in 2009 – when he'd barely sat down in the Oval Office – was toe-curlingly premature. It damaged the new president's standing at home (where plenty of US voters mistrust do-gooding foreigners) and was deemed sufficiently misjudged to make Obama stay away from Oslo award ceremony. Smart man, given that the winners list contained some failures and a few rascals.
Early reactions to the 2012 award suggest puzzlement. Why now when the protracted eurozone crisis staggers on? Why not earlier, for instance after the successful enlargement into the former Soviet bloc in the years after the Berlin Wall collapsed and the old Soviet Union imploded? Why not later, when the EU has triumphed over its financial problems?
The puzzlement is offset by the delighted noises coming out of Brussels and other major capitals. Did I just hear Italy's Romano Prodi on the BBC saying Europe is more united than at any time since the Roman empire (collapsed 476 AD) and still in need of "more and more unity". That sort of response tips my own reaction towards what Lord David Owen is calling "churlish".
He should talk. He's been pretty churlish towards the EU's record in recent decades, since he swung from ardent enthusiasm towards a more agnostic (and healthy) attitude. The trouble with Brussels is that, unlike some brave and persistent local hero in a world trouble spot - Northern Ireland has had several worthy winners - it doesn't need morale-boosting pats on the back. It's quite good at doing that without any outside help. Too good in fact.
Clearly the citation suggests that the award is meant to encourage EU leaders to press forward with the project as well as to recognise – rather belatedly – that it has helped keep the peace in Europe since 1945. Eurosceptics often appear to forget this, pocketing the gains without much acknowledgement while quibbing about the price of vegetables. War was very terrible twice in the Europe of the 20th century and nearly destroyed it. Perhaps with hindsight we may say it did.
But Nato played at least as big a part and did so sooner at crucial junctures, not least in expanding into the former Soviet bloc after 1989 and in being more effective in the former Yugoslavia of the 1990s. The fact that the US was the dominant player and the Russians the clear and present danger made it easier for Nato to be more decisive and dynamic.
Germany's abject rejection of military force as its main instrument of foreign policy after 200 years of Prussian-led expansionism was also pretty important. If awards are to go to institutions, then both Germany and Nato deserve consideration. Silly you may feel? Well, yes indeed. How about the World Health Organisation or the UN Refugee Agency team? The Red Cross won the award in both world wars.
The trouble with today's timing is that it may encourage renewed complacency of the kind that has marked the protracted eurozone crisis since it startedin 2007 and became lethal when the Bush White House allowed Lehman Brothers to fail the following year. The EU blamed Anglo-Saxon market capitalism for the crisis, as if the structure of the eurozone itself was not as defective as anything done by London, New York or Washington.
More lethal still, the euro's weakness – reckless, under-priced lending to peripheral economies (Greece, Portugal, Ireland etc) which were likely to blow up - has proved much harder to remedy. The major players have usually done too little and too late to impress markets and ratings agencies which have gone from their own complacent assessments to neurosis.
They did it and it's still not clear if they can put it right as the European Central Bank (ECB) struggles to overcome German reluctance to letting it become a real central bank and do whatever it deems necessary to restore confidence and growth.
"We don't want to underwrite Greek debt," say the Germans.
"But you did when you agreed to let them enter your currency union," comes the reply. "You were a pay-day loan operator, Wonga to the poor."
The outcome is pressure to create a trans-eurozone banking union and - who knows – an EU finance ministry with real teeth, and to do so at breakneck speed. The austerity imposed on Greece and other stricken states is creating a backlash in the name of democratic accountability, the resurgence of the very nationalism the EU was created back in 1957 to quell for ever.
It looks ugly and could easily become uglier. If it is averted it will be via a German-dominated core Europe, the kind of outcome which Britain has struggled for centuries - against France, Spain, Russia and Germany itself - to prevent. The future is clouded. Yet the word from Oslo – and from Brussels – is that another Franco-German war is unthinkable. Let us fervently hope they are all right.
But nothing is unthinkable.
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