"Radical Idea" Reversed: Author Says Nobel Committee Betrays Founder's Anti-Military Intent

2012-12-10T17:11:38.445Z

For years the Norwegian Nobel Peace Committee has faced criticism over its secrecy and selections, perhaps most notably in 1973 when Henry Kissinger won the award. Leading the critique of the committee has been Norwegian lawyer Fredrik Heffermehl. "Since [the committee is] very devoted to the NATO alliance and to the United States foreign policy," Heffermehl says, "the prize has come to serve the exact opposite of what it was intended to serve ... to support the work for breaking the military tradition and creating global peace or demilitarized global peace order. It's a very radical idea." Heffermehl is past president of Norwegian Peace Council and a member of the board of the International Peace Bureau, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1910. He is author of the book, "The Nobel Peace Prize: What Nobel Really Wanted." Before Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, died on Dec. 10, 1896, he wrote in his will that his fortune was to be used to give out annual prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace.

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"Radical Idea" Reversed: Author Says Nobel Committee Betrays Founder's Anti-Military Intent