Europe Told to Count Its Blessings

LONDON - Europe was on Friday invited to count its blessings, set its present difficulties aside, and celebrate a legacy of six decades of democracy and peace.

Despite the “grave economic difficulties” facing the Continent, the Nobel Peace Prize committee decided the 27-member European Union deserved recognition for its long-term contribution to peace since its foundation after World War II.

With governments fighting to tackle a chronic debt crisis and industrial decline, it would seem an odd time to celebrate an institution whose popularity might understandably be waning among its 500 million recession-hit citizens.

Perhaps that was the point. The Norwegian-based committee, mindful of the growth of extremism and nationalism in an era of austerity, evidently decided it was the right moment to remind Europeans what they had achieved.

“The European Union is in the middle of one of its worst crises, but perhaps it is precisely now that the peace and stabilization project deserves a hand from the ‘no' country Norway,” said the Norwegian state broadcaster NRK, referring to the fact that the country's voters long ago passed up the chance to join the E.U.

The European Union has for “six decades contributed to the advancement of peace, reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe,” according to the prize-givers.

That included an end to the historic antipathy between Germany and France, the two mainland Continental giants, and the embrace of former Eastern bloc nations after the fall of the Berlin wall.

Nobel Peace Prize day is as good a time as any to examine the proposition that the world has never been as peaceful as it is today.

Two partisans of the thesis, Joshua S. Goldstein and Steven Pinker, acknowledged in an opinion article in the Sunday Review last December that the idea that war was obsolescent might seem preposterously utopian.

“Aren't we facing an endless war on terror, a clash of civilizations, the menace of nuclear rogue states? Isn't war in our genes, something that will always be with us?” they asked.

The evidence, they said, suggested otherwise.

Mr. Pinker, a Harvard psychologist, and Mr. Goldstein, an American University international relations expert, argued that the modern prevalence of images of war could be misleading. Wars between states were increasingly rare and civil wars were fewer, smaller and more localized.

Their assessment was echoed by Geir Lundestad, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, who said ahead of Friday's prize announcement: “The long term trend is that the world is indeed getting more peaceful.”

This year's Global Peace Index from the Institute for Economics and Peace found that the world had improved in peacefulness for the first time since 2009, a modest indicator since the index has only been running for six years.

At the top of the rankings, as if to unde rline the Nobel committee's choice, were the countries of Europe. The survey found that Western Europe remained markedly the most peaceful region in the world, with the majority of its countries ranking in the global top 20.

That record may be at risk, however, as the impoverishment of countries such as Greece spurs high levels of protests, anti-immigration extremism and violent crime.

It was a reminder of what could happen if the Continent began to disintegrate, according to Thorbjorn Jagland, the prize committee chairman. Hence his exhortation that “we should do everything we can to secure what we have achieved and move forward.”