Tom Loftus: Trump, Norway and the Nobel Peace Prize

The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com.

Jonas Gahr Støre, the prime minister of Norway, joined many of his predecessors when he was threatened with all manner of payback for wrongdoing. The doing here was the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the supposedly wrong person.

President Trump, miffed at not getting the prize, told Støre, “Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace…” Veiled threats followed.

The siege in the Monty Python film “The Holy Grail” comes to mind. When those in the besieged castle won’t give in, the ultimate weapon is rolled up to the moat and the carcass of a diseased cow is catapulted over the wall.

No use explaining that the Government of Norway does not decide on the prize. To those sitting on the throne of power in their country, it is unthinkable that the prize could be decided upon by a five-member committee operating independently from the Norwegian state.

When the Chinese democracy crusader Liu Xiaobo was awarded the prize in 2010 the People’s Republic of China reacted in a furious rage and imposed economic sanctions on Norway, including a high tariff on Norwegian salmon imports. Not a fish was spared. It took Norway years to rebuild trade with China. 

Jonas Gahr Støre was the minister of Foreign Affairs then and handled this crisis.

Liu Xiaobo was in prison when the prize was awarded. And in prison is when he died in 2017.

When the anti-Nazi journalist Carl von Ossietzky was awarded the prize in 1935, he was in prison. Imprisoned by Hitler in 1933 for treason, he was moved to a concentration camp, where he died in 1938.

Hitler was furious at the “ridiculous insult” of recognition of the “Traitor Ossietzky” and prohibited Germans from accepting any Nobel Prizes “for all time.”

Der Führer would complain regularly about the bad press he got in Norway. 

On April 9, 1940, Nazi Germany in a surprise attack invaded neutral Norway and a harsh occupation followed. It ended when the German commander surrendered to Norwegian forces on May 8, 1945. Norway was not liberated by the Allies. Churchill and Roosevelt deemed Norway’s role would be to passively resist, oppose with stoicism, and endure the Occupation so the 350,000 German troops in the country would be tied down.

After the war, the idea of neutrality was gone forever, and a Nordic alliance — Norway, Sweden and Finland — quickly discarded as toothless against the Soviet Union.

So Norway became a founding member of NATO — the only NATO country bordering the Soviet Union. In the Barents Sea of the Arctic Ocean on the other side of that border lies the port of Murmansk, which is the one and only Soviet (now Russian) ice free port accessing the Atlantic. Here is the base of the Soviet (now Russian) Northern Fleet of nuclear submarines. Their sole purpose is to be prepared to launch missiles to obliterate the United States.

To Norway, NATO meant that the United States would defend Norway. To the United States, it meant Norway would become a staging area for the inevitable confrontation with the Soviet Union.

American nuclear submarines would prowl the nearby seas tracking the Soviet subs and find succor in ports of the Norwegian fjords. Airfields would be built all along the coast of Norway, with the infrastructure needed to receive American fighter jets. A series of huge bunkers would be dug into mountains to house all the material needed to equip the U.S. Marines who have the defense of Norway as a mission.

Russia today is the aggressor. The invasion of Ukraine showed that all along it was what it had always been — a bear in sheep’s clothing.

Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre will nod politely at each threat to NATO and tack like a Viking longboat to manage the whimsical winds of policy changes blowing from Washington.

Norwegians recognize that the current president has the attributes of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, literature’s all time great fabulist. 

Jonas knows that no president in his or her right mind will give up in NATO what is both the forward bulwark of America’s defense against Russia and like the cocked hammer of Thor a credible threat for neutering the Northern Fleet.

Trump’s words change daily on foreign policy, including NATO, but the facts on the ground cut through the fog.

“Thousands of American troops are gearing up for large-scale combat drills centered on the defense of Norway, even as the U.S. finds itself at odds with numerous allies over the fate of Greenland. About 3,000 Marines will be joined by roughly 25,000 personnel from a dozen countries for Cold Response 26, slated to kick off in March. This month, allied militaries are doing unit-level cold weather training in preparation,” Marine Corps Forces Europe and Africa said in a recent statement. 

“This exercise isn’t just about preparing for today’s threats,” Maj. Gen. Daniel Shipley, commander of MARFOREUR-AF, said in the statement. “It’s about building the capabilities and strengthening the capacity necessary to deter future aggression and safeguard our shared interests.” 

What about the Nobel Peace Prize going to the wrong person? Also good cards to be played on this by Norway.

It is all about Ukraine. The history of the Nobel Prize Committee is pretty clear: no cigar for a truce, a ceasefire, a buffer zone or postponing war while Russia regroups.

President Teddy Roosevelt said in his Peace Prize lecture: 

“Peace is generally good in itself…but becomes a very evil thing if it serves merely as a mask for cowardice and sloth, or as an instrument to further the ends of despotism or anarchy.”

Only an internationally recognized binding peace treaty signed by the two parties gets the gold gong with Alfred Nobel’s profile stamped on it.

Roosevelt got the prize for personally brokering the Treaty of Portsmouth ending the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. The combatants signed the Treaty at Portsmouth, New Hampshire on September 5, 1905.

The Nobel Committee awarded the prize to Woodrow Wilson in 1919 “in recognition of his Fourteen Points peace program and his work in achieving inclusion of the Covenant of the League of Nations in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.” Nobel’s Will left at his death, which guides the prize committee, focuses on the creation of institutions that prevent war. 

The vote was not unanimous. Committee members were miffed. Thought they had been naive. Between the date the prize for Wilson was announced in early October, and the December 10 award ceremony, the U.S. Senate rejected United States membership in the League of Nations.

Presidents have not been awarded the prize for being the one to convene negotiations that led to a peace. No prize for Jimmy Carter for the Camp David Accords or Bill Clinton for the Dayton Accords.

The Peace Prize in years ahead will only be awarded to an American president if the Russian aggression in Ukraine is stopped, not rewarded, and secured by an internationally recognized treaty backed by the United States in word and deed.

Keep in mind here the bitter taste of the history of the 1919 prize when the United States Senate voted no on the League of Nations.

Jonas, and I will call him Jonas as we first met in October of 1993 when he was the young advisor on international affairs to Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. We worked together for four productive years.

His job is to do all to support Ukraine. To stop Russia right now. There is a land war in Europe. And Norway is in Europe.

–Loftus, a former Democratic speaker of the Assembly and Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate, is the former U.S. ambassador to Norway and author of the award-winning memoir, “Mission to Oslo: Dancing with the Queen, Dealmaking with the Russians, Shaping History.”