Anne Applebaum has received a peace prize — the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. An Associated Press report on the subject begins,
The prominent American journalist and historian Anne Applebaum urged continued support for Ukraine as she accepted a prestigious German prize on Sunday, arguing that pacifism in the face of aggression is often nothing more than appeasement.
Said Applebaum, “As I am here today accepting a peace prize, this seems the right moment to point out that ‘I want peace’ is not always a moral argument.”
Here is another paragraph from the AP report:
Following pacifism to its logical conclusion, Applebaum argued, would “mean that we should acquiesce to the military conquest of Ukraine, to the cultural destruction of Ukraine, to the construction of concentration camps in Ukraine, to the kidnapping of children in Ukraine.”
Among Applebaum’s books are Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine and Gulag: A History. She is a successor to Robert Conquest, who wrote, among other books, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine and Stalin: Breaker of Nations.
The peace prize to Applebaum was controversial. The subject of peace is controversial. What is it, anyway? What is “peace”? It is more than the absence of war, but it is not war, either. Years ago, I wrote a history of the Nobel Peace Prize, whose title is “Peace, They Say.”
Many of the Nobel choices have been controversial, and I think most of them have. Two of the most controversial of all came in 1906 and 1953: when Theodore Roosevelt and George C. Marshall won the prize.
What Anne Applebaum said on accepting her peace prize reminds me of what TR and Marshall said on accepting theirs.
TR won for his mediation of the Russo–Japanese War, and also for his support of arbitration — specifically, at the new international court in The Hague. His Nobel lecture is “one of his most striking statements,” I say in my book, “a tough-minded and thoughtful discussion of war and peace.” Here is a sample:
Peace is generally good in itself, but it is never the highest good unless it comes as the handmaid of righteousness; and it 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. We despise and abhor the bully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life, but we despise no less the coward and the voluptuary. No man is worth calling a man who will not fight rather than submit to infamy or see those that are dear to him suffer wrong.
Have another taste:
Moreover, and above all, let us remember that words count only when they give expression to deeds, or are to be translated into them. The leaders of the Red Terror prattled of peace while they steeped their hands in the blood of the innocent; and many a tyrant has called it peace when he has scourged honest protest into silence.
Yes, indeed.
In 1953, General Marshall became the first career military man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and he remains the only one today. He won for the European Recovery Program, as he was the only one to call it. Everyone else called it “the Marshall Plan.”
Marshall said, “In my country, my military associates frequently tell me that we Americans have learned our lesson.” What lesson was that? That a country must be militarily prepared, that, in a dangerous world, a country must not let its guard down. Marshall continued,
I completely disagree with this contention and point to the rapid disintegration between 1945 and 1950 of our once vast power for maintaining the peace. As a direct consequence, in my opinion, there resulted the brutal invasion of South Korea, which for a time threatened the complete defeat of our hastily arranged forces in that field. I speak of this with deep feeling because in 1939 and again in the early fall of 1950 it suddenly became my duty, my responsibility, to rebuild our national military strength in the very face of the gravest emergencies.
This was not an ordinary Nobel lecture. But it was one of the best.
Peace, peace — peace, they say. “They make a desert and call it peace,” a Roman once observed.
Last summer, an AP report out of Budapest noted that Viktor Orbán “has blamed ‘pro-war’ politicians in Washington and Brussels for increasing tensions with Russia and portrayed his refusal to supply Kyiv with military aid and other support as a ‘pro-peace’ position unique in Europe.”
Uh-huh. Sure. There is nothing peaceful about Russian occupation. Ukrainians know this, from ghastly experience. And the likes of Anne Applebaum and Robert Conquest — and Theodore Roosevelt and George C. Marshall — have a better grasp on peace than most.