Nobel has been "captive to the politics of the time"

19th century dynamite magnate Alfred Nobel envisioned the Peace Prize that bears his name as honoring those "who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations." But the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee, which Friday named President Barack Obama as the 2009 laureate, has throughout its history been captive to the politics of the time.

Past Winners

In October 1989, for example, with China's Tiananmen Square uprising still fresh, the committee announced it was awarding the prize to Beijing's nemesis, the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of the Tibetan people. It was, ostensibly, recognition of the Dalai Lama's struggle against more than 30 years of Chinese occupation -- but also a slap at Beijing.

"The Norwegians know they have the opportunity to influence world opinion twice a year" -- when they announce the prize and when they award it, said Scott London, co-author of a new book on Nobel lectures with his historian grandfather, Irwin Abrams. "And they want to make the most of it."

Such early laureates as Mr. Nobel's friend Baroness Bertha von Suttner were activists in idealistic, if ineffectual, peace groups. "It is erroneous to believe that the future will of necessity continue the trends of the past and the present," the baroness said in her 1905 acceptance speech, four years after the first prize was given and nine years before the start of World War I.

President Theodore Roosevelt, who received the 1906 prize for his mediation of the Russo-Japanese war, was the first person with political power to be tapped. Gunnar Knudsen, president of the Norwegian parliament, praised Mr. Roosevelt's "happy role in bringing to an end the bloody war."

Mr. Roosevelt was hardly a pacifist. He had earned his stripes as an enthusiastic cavalry commander fighting Spanish troops in Cuba. Some argued the Norwegians chose Mr. Roosevelt to curry favor with the U.S.