Congratulations to ElBaradei!

Heartiest congratulations to Mohamed El-Baradei, the talented, judicious Egyptian national who, as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has just been named along with the IAEA as the winner of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.
In that citation from the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the prize every year, the Committee states that the award is being made to this year’s two winners,

for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way.

It goes on to say:

At a time when the threat of nuclear arms is again increasing, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to underline that this threat must be met through the broadest possible international cooperation. This principle finds its clearest expression today in the work of the IAEA and its Director General…
In his will, Alfred Nobel wrote that the Peace Prize should, among other criteria, be awarded to whoever had done most for the “abolition or reduction of standing armies”. In its application of this criterion in recent decades, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has concentrated on the struggle to diminish the significance of nuclear arms in international politics, with a view to their abolition. That the world has achieved little in this respect makes active opposition to nuclear arms all the more important today.

As I learned when I wrote my 2000 book on some past winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, the all-Norwegian committee that makes the award generally seeks not just to recognize past achievements, but also to encourage and draw attention to ongoing efforts to make the world a more peaceful place.
From that point of view, we should read the citations for ElBaradei and the IAEA as strongly critical of the Bush administration’s moves toward abandoning the (by aspiration) “universal” approach of the Nucler Nonproliferation Tearty, and of the IAEA which embodies and operationalizes its provisions. The Bushies prefer instead to try to use small ad-hoc coalitions of likeminded (i.e. pro-US) states to pursue its more aggressive and escalatory counter-proliferation –as opposed to non-proliferation– policies.
Also, at the political level, while the Norwegian Nobel Committee has indeed over the years “concentrated on the struggle to diminish the significance of nuclear arms in international politics, with a view to their abolition”, the Bush administration– like all preceding US administrations, and all other members of the hyper-privileged “P-5 club” in the United Nations– has had a very different view of the desirability of the nuclear-weapons states continuing to exercise quite undue influence in international affairs…
Yes indeed, it would be great if we could reduce the significance of nuclear arms in international affairs, and also abolish all the world’s nuclear arsenals! The NPT offers one, carefully ngotiated and nearly universally agreed, way to do this. Althought it institutes, for an interim phase of unspecified duration, a highly discriminatory regime in which just five states are “entitled” to continue to hold nuclear arsenals for some time, nevertheless it mitigates the effects of that discrimination in two ways:

1. It states clearly (Article 6) that the goal of all signatories is complete and general disarmament, and
2. It establishes a network of reciprocal obligations between the nuclear weapons ‘have’ states and the nuclear weapons ‘have not’ states. For example, parties in a position to do so should indeed “co-operate in contributing… to the further development of the application of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of non-niuclear weapon States Party to the Treaty, with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world.” (Art.4)

No U.S. administration has ever taken any serious steps toward operationalizing Article 6. And as we know, the Bush administration has been extremely busy since 2001 trying to find a way to impose harsh punishment on Iran for seeking to exercise its rights under Article 4.
Just Wednesday, ElBaradei made an important speech in Moscow in which he proposed a way to defuse current US-Iran tensions over the nuclear issue. (Hat-tip here to Scott H for signaling this one.)
According to the LA Times report linked to there, ElBaradei said that,

The most effective way to stop the spread of nuclear weapons is for the international community to guarantee the supply of nuclear fuel to countries that agree not to produce it themselves…
ElBaradei… said that approach would undercut the argument of countries such as Iran that acquiring the ability to produce their own nuclear fuel is the only way to shield a civilian energy industry from disruptions in supply.
“Objective, apolitical, nonproliferation criteria” should be used to guarantee the fuel supplies, ElBaradei said in a speech here. “If a country meets these criteria, it would be assured of the supply of fuel. That, I think, would take care, in my view, of at least 80% of the problem.”
…
ElBaradei spoke at a luncheon meeting and subsequent news conference organized by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington-based foundation that works to prevent the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The group was founded by former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and media mogul Ted Turner.

So there we have an international civil servant and diplomat who is coming forward with concrete, moderate proposals on an issue like the US-Iran nuclear-supplies standoff that have the potential for defusing all the US-hyped international tension over that issue… I doubt that Mohamed ElBaradei would have won George Bush’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. (Kind of scary to speculate who might have, don’t you think?)
But ElBaradei’s nomination certainly wins my support. Well done, the Norwegian Nobel Committee.