An American Beneficiary Receives the Nobel Prize
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As a follow-up to George Marshall’s Nobel Prize in 1953, how about a post-humous award to Truman, Kennedy or Reagan?
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Today the Nobel committee awarded the 2012 Peace Prize to the European Union. Europe’s 60-year commitment to reconciliation and peace following World War II were heralded as the primary reason for the honor.
European Council president Herman Van Rompuy welcomed the award, speaking from Helsinki where he had been meeting with Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen. “It is a recognition of the work of the European Union as a peacemaker,” Van Rompuy said. “We were at war during centuries; we had two world wars that in fact were European civil wars. We put an end to this, and with the European Union wars of that kind cannot happen again anymore.”
“So the European Union is really the biggest peacemaking institution ever created in world history, and we have still a mission of promoting peace, democracy, human rights – in the rest of the world,” he added.
George Marshall formulated a plan of rehabilitation for Europe after World War II that allowed it to survive and prosper. U.S. Presidents thereafter saw that such plan succeeded.
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Not to spoil the self-congratulation festival, but a not so minor detail is that without the United States, there never would have been a European Union. The U.S. saved Europe in World Wars I & II as well as in the Cold War. Were it not for America, Europe would have been eating copious amounts of spaetzle or borscht and listening to endless oom-pah-pah or Tchaikovsky.
To refresh the memory, in 1947, the U.S. instituted The Marshall Plan which was the American program to aid post-war Europe. The United States gave monetary support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II in order to prevent the spread of Soviet Communism. It worked.
From the late 1940s through the early 1990s, American resolve from both Democrats and Republicans alike helped keep Western Europe safe from the Soviet Union. Had it not been for the U.S. as an ally, all of Europe would have fallen under Soviet domination and a European Union would never have existed.
In the last couple of decades, it has become unfashionable and unintellectual to give the U.S. credit for any good that has resulted in this world. Yet it is no coincidence that the European Union was created, and the world prospered, at the time of America’s zenith. The 20th century, known as “The American Century,” has brought much good to the world, thanks to American principle and will.
It is likely a bridge too far to ask for recognition of the United States’ role in making this world a better place but at a minimum, the EU could at least recognize that their accomplishment of not destroying themselves came with a little assistance from outsiders.
-I.M. Windee
