Though I’m unfamiliar with the work of the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, I was nonetheless pleased to see the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to a non-government official. Other (unworthy) candidates this year included Angela Merkel, John Kerry and Javad Zarif.

In “War and Peace as States of Mind” (published in Marc Guttman’s excellent anthology Why Peace), Butler Shaffer hits the nail on the head:

Contrary to our politically directed thinking, peace is not just the absence of war, a condition to be turned on or off as suits the needs of nation-states in manipulating their respective populations. When promoters and conductors of the war system are Nobel Peace Prize recipients, it becomes evident that the popular meaning of the concept has become little more than a confused and contradictory strategy to be employed in fleeting service to the interests of coercive power structures.