Nobel Peace Prize loses its lustre

There was a mixture of mirth and disbelief when it was announced last week that the European Union had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It wasn’t because, as in the case of Barack Obama, that the union had increased the use of unmanned drones to murder military targets and sent surges of troops to Afghanistan but it just didn’t seem to fit. In my case, the announcement was serendipitous because for the last few weeks I have been researching an under-reported fact lurking below the surface of the Greek bailout deal.

 

Everyone in Europe and the world is aware of the crushing austerity measures being forced on the Greek people by their government at the behest of the EU and the IMF. This is old news.

What has been less well covered in the media is the fact that defence spending by the Greek government has not suffered the same kind of restriction as spending in these areas of vital public service. Doctors, hospitals and medicines are now unavailable to many Greek people but the government continues to spend very significant amounts on a defence budget, which in 2006 made it the third-largest importer of arms after India and China.

The Journal of the Turkish Weekly reported in that year that Greece spent US$1,434m on arms importation. While the figure has certainly dropped since the austerity measures have been imposed, the cuts amount to nothing even approaching the virtual destruction of public services in other areas.

As recently as November 2011, Greece was the highest military spender in the EU as a percentage of GDP. The biggest beneficiaries of Greek spending on arms are the French and the Germans. This has led many people in Greece to ask why, when they are being asked to endure swingeing austerity, French and German military companies are making many millions in profit from the Greek exchequer.

I’m sure most people will agree, this is not an unreasonable question. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute monitors and analyses arms trade and global security. It reports that between 2008 and 2011, Greek spending on its military budget had indeed fallen by 26% but the sums involved were still astronomical. The institute has also reported that 58% of Greece’s military spending went to Germany in 2010.

Without doing the maths, we can safely see that this represents a significant boost to the German economy. From this, we can also see exactly why Germany and the French would be eager that Greek military spending would stay constant so as to continue benefitting their own economies. The fact that the benefit to their own economies comes at the expense and in some cases the actual lives, of the people of Greece has serious moral implications.

What is interesting to note is that, far from being a secret, this story has been in the public domain for quite some time. In March of this year, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a member of the European Parliament, said publically that the former Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, told him that Berlin and Paris had not wanted Athens to slash military spending, as that would hurt French and German industry.

“It’s very difficult because our partners don’t want an immediate and radical cut if it has an impact on agreements between Greece and industry. At the time, it was for German submarines and French helicopters.”

He made his statement while making efforts to have Greek military spending reduced so that the country’s budget could be balanced with as little pain as possible for the people living there. He was further quoted in Defence News saying, “The French and German leaders also insisted that Greece would use part of a first tranche of financial aid from the European Union to honor the arms contracts.” This was the money given by the EU to Greece in order to stave off a national debt default. In this context, is easier to understand why the people of Greece took to the streets in a state of rage to protest at the injustice being visited upon them at the behest of the European Union.

To further compound the irony of this situation, The Guardian reported in March of this year that Portugal, another nation on its financial knees, is the second-biggest importer of German arms after Greece. Given that the French and German governments are fattening their own economies through the continued export of arms to nations beset by chronic economic difficulties calls into question the whole European project.

It very definitely calls into stark relief the awarding of a peace prize to the European Union as a whole. The power wielded in the union by France and Germany is exemplified in this case and it is a damning critique of how they choose to wield that power.

Greek war games with their potential future European partners in Turkey, facilitated by German and French military companies with the blessing of those governments, are having a real and terrible effect on the lives of people in Greece. Living standards in the country have dropped by 30% and people are unable to feed themselves and their families.

Whatever else was considered by the panel awarding the Nobel Peace Prize, the fact that this issue was ignored shows what a hollow award the prize has become. The facts outlined here do not point to a group of nations working for peace or mutual benefit.

They point to the exploitation of weak nations by stronger ones, the devastation of people’s lives for monetary gain and the devaluing of politics as a practice in the eyes of anyone who cares to look.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘Peace’ as, “1. Freedom from disturbance; tranquility. 2 A state or period in which there is no war or a war has ended.’ It is in the second definition that the Stockholm panel finds its justification but as we all know, not all wars now take place on battlefields.
Nations can wage quiet war not just on each other but on each other’s populations through the nefarious wielding of power, be it financial or political.