Rewarding failure: The IAEA's achievements do not merit a Nobel Prize

October 11, 2005
Calgary Herald
http://www.canada.com/calgary/calgaryherald/news/theeditorialpage/story.html?id=669e2f03-345d-48a1-9a11-fbf43f925d2f
Presumably, the award committee which chose Mohammed ElBaradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency which he heads to receive this year's Nobel Peace Prize, intended to recognize good intentions. Certainly, it is hard to see how it could have been given for results.
Ostensibly, the award is for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way. Yet, that hardly describes the unfortunate record of the eight years during which ElBaradei has been director general of the IAEA.
During that time, a belligerent Iran has repudiated international agreements and set forth on an ambitious program to develop nuclear capability.
Meanwhile, North Korea continues to defy the world and makes no pretence of peaceful intentions. The IAEA's sad part in North Korea's clandestine weapons development was to have been deceived for the decade during which its inspectors attempted to monitor the government's activities there.
The one place where a serious de-escalation of tension between countries armed with nuclear weapons has taken place appears to owe more to sport than the IAEA. Earlier this year, India and Pakistan, which in 2002 came close to war over the disputed territory of Kashmir, sealed their diplomatic efforts with a series of cricket matches -- a game over which both countries are passionate.
To be fair to ElBaradei, his task is hardly less formidable than the labours of Hercules, and if he has accomplished little, he has but equalled his predecessors. Still, that there are less nuclear weapons in the world's arsenals today than 20 years ago, is far more to the credit of former U.S. president Ronald Reagan than any official of the IAEA.
And so, one is left wondering what precisely one must do to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Over the years, it has gone to obvious peacemakers such as Mother Teresa, less obvious choices such as Henry Kissinger, and obvious men of blood, such as Yasser Arafat.
ElBaradei and the IAEA are not the worst recipients, but their failing grade deserves no recognition. Could it be that the Nobel committee, their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, chose the 60th anniversary of the only wartime use of nuclear weapons to issue a thinly veiled rebuke to U.S. President George W. Bush? For, the one thing ElBaradei got right was that invading U.S. forces would find no nuclear weapons in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
It seems little enough to exalt; but evidently, it was sufficient.