In its most recent selections of peace laureates Barack Obama and Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has been pushing the strategic agenda of its chairman since 2009. Outside of European policy circles, Thorbjoern Jagland has no celebrity status, yet he is among the most powerful figures influencing the future global order.<\/p>\n
The veteran Norwegian Labour Party politician has taken a stance similar to that of Britain\u2019s Tony Blair in support of European Union integration and a strong alliance with Washington to ensure Western leadership in international affairs. He has served as Norway\u2019s prime minister, foreign minister, speaker of the parliament known as the Storting, and current chairman of the Council of Europe, a body that backed the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization during the Cold War.<\/p>\n
His political career has been defined by his close relationship with NATO. He sat on the Norwegian government\u2019s standing committee on defense and was a key player in NATO parliamentary conferences.<\/p>\n
On his home turf, Labour is the party of choice for the Norwegian officer corps. Despite its relatively small size, Norway is a significant military player due to its strategic location near the former Soviet Arctic Fleet base at Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula. Throughout the Cold War, the Norwegians\u2014every male citizen is a soldier and has a rifle\u2014were the front line on the Russian border. That vanguard role continues today, with Norwegian troops on the ground in Afghanistan, its naval vessels curbing piracy off Somalia, Pentagon anti-ballistic missile systems and anti-satellite technology waging the struggle for outer space, and the world\u2019s most advanced anti-submarine technology. Norway has the highest per-capita troop deployment among NATO\u2019s 28-member states.<\/p>\n The challenge for the West has changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with a new potential enemy taking shape in an economic coalition known as the BRICs\u2014Brazil, Russia, India and, most feared of all, China. Jagland, as a public voice for NATO strategists, is calling on an enlarged Western alliance to stand down the resurgence of military powers China and Russia and disrupt their ever-closer relationships with Brazil and India.<\/p>\n At a NATO-sponsored conference of European parliamentarians last year, Jagland spoke tough words: \u201cWhen we are not able to stop tyranny, war starts. This is why NATO is indispensable. NATO is the only multilateral military organization rooted in international law. It is an organization that the U.N. can use when necessary\u2014to stop tyranny, like we did in the Balkans.\u201d His reference was to the NATO bombing campaign, invasion and occupation of the now-terminated Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia in the late 1990s.<\/p>\n To summarize his message: If, anywhere in the world, tyrants cannot be overthrown by peaceful means, war is inevitable\u2014and NATO will wage that war.<\/p>\n These are chilling words coming from the chairman of the Nobel Peace Committee. Jagland later said on announcing the peace prize for Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo: \u201cWe have to speak when others cannot speak. As China is rising, we should have the right to criticize. We want to advance those forces that want China to become more democratic.\u201d<\/p>\n A term like \u201cadvance those forces\u201d is eerily similar to the euphemisms in Japanese textbooks that describe \u201cadvances\u201d into foreign territory on continental Asia. It reflects a militaristic mindset.<\/p>\n The New Global Order<\/strong><\/p>\n At the 2009 NATO conference, Jagland dropped a hint of what was to come: \u201cWe must build alliances and adapt to new realities. [We must] understand and debate how democratic rights can be upheld in the 21st century. How freedom can be assured. What kind of alliances we need to that end. And we need a New Strategic Concept.\u201d<\/p>\n Among his political foes in Norway, Jagland is called \u201cour own George Bush Jr.\u201d It\u2019s good joke, but not when considering the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, or while Jagland, with this latest Nobel Peace prize, has just precipitated a damaging diplomatic crisis between the West and China. The controversy will only worsen when the Nobel medallions are given out in December.<\/p>\n The Nobel scandal has already scuttled the Norwegian oil firm Statoil\u2019s plans to sell Beijing the Peregrino oil field offshore of Brazil\u2014the first real blow against the BRIC coalition. Politicians and businessmen who are eager about emerging international trade opportunities are simply naive about geopolitics. Once again, the civilians have been outflanked by the military.<\/p>\n NATO\u2019s Asian Allies<\/strong><\/p>\n Meanwhile, Jagland\u2019s colleagues among the Norwegian defense forces have recently initiated military-technology deals with South Korea and Japan at a time of regional tensions with China The conservative government of President Lee Myung-bak is pursuing a crash program to build a new generation of Sejong-class KDX-3 destroyers. In the wake of the past summer\u2019s South Korean ship-sinking crisis, Seoul is putting renewed emphasis on anti-submarine warfare.<\/p>\n Norwegian shipbuilders, including the Kongsberg Group, are the world leader in sonar and electronic warfare systems. The Norwegian Nansen-class of anti-submarine destroyers is top of the line. The Royal Navy of Norway has decades of real-life experience at chasing Soviet, now Russian, U-boats. The military ties between Oslo and Seoul go back to the Korean War, when Norway sent a military medical unit as an ally.<\/p>\n Meanwhile in Tokyo, the Japanese defense industry recently hosted a high-level Norwegian military delegation. Among the topics of discussion was the growing naval threat of China and the need for NATO and the US-Japan security alliance to cooperate to defend the new Arctic Sea passage. As global warming melts the polar ice cap, the waters north of Russia can be navigated.<\/p>\n The emerging connections between NATO and America\u2019s East Asian allies are starting to reveal the New Strategic Concept: the coming naval encirclement of China and Russia. With ground troops on bases in Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan, the circle is closing. The world is plunging into the Second Cold War.<\/p>\n The Peace Laureate<\/strong><\/p>\n How does an obscure dissident sitting in a Chinese prison figure into this grand plan for global conflict? Liu Xiaobo\u2019s personal link with Norway started during his days as a visiting scholar to the University of Oslo in 1988. At that moment, the Soviet Union was in a deep crisis of disintegration. NATO strategists were anxious about the prospect of Moscow being saved in the nick of time by its onetime friend and ally, China. Faxes out of the Chinese Embassy in Moscow were of utmost concern, but were indecipherable, being written in Chinese.<\/p>\n Back in those dark days of the Cold War, there weren\u2019t many Chinese in Scandinavia, so Liu was a rare commodity\u2014a scholar from Beijing who loathed Beijing. Whether Liu became a NATO asset is a matter of top-secret classification. Oslo\u2019s repeated inquiries about him through two decades, the Western media\u2019s patronage, and the Nobel selection over other Chinese dissidents indicate some sort of special bond. Whatever the hidden details of his foreign involvements, Liu\u2019s Peace Prize is serving as the bugle call for NATO\u2019s global crusade against so-called \u201ctyranny.\u201d<\/p>\n The fact that an open warmonger heads the Nobel Peace Committee has completely discredited what was once the world\u2019s most prestigious Peace Prize. That honor is now just another weapon in the arsenal of the Great Powers mobilizing to reassert their authority over their former colonial domain. The goal of the West is not democracy and human rights; what its leaders really desire is domination and warfare. The intentions are clear. Thus we must each prepare, in our different ways, for the coming bloodshed.
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\nA Military Mentality<\/strong><\/p>\n
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