This comes from my ‘I Thought I Had Heard Everything’ department.
Col. Vladimir Putin has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize – bet you didn’t guess that. Admittedly he’s only one of 278 candidates, but I’m sure Peter Hitchens and other Western fans will agree he deserves not just to be short-listed but to win.
What better qualifications can one think of than bringing Europe to the brink of a major war? After all, every war is followed by peace, and no doubt, once the Ukraine has been sorted out, peace will ensue.
How long it’ll last is a different matter, especially since the Baltics are next, but we shouldn’t look that far ahead. What matters is now, and Col. Putin is trying to achieve peace after the minor hiccup of a war.
His selfless dedication to supplying weapons to Hezbollah and Hamaz are also ultimately directed at achieving peace in the Middle East, once Israel has been ‘driven into the sea’, to use his clients’ terminology.
If Col. Putin wins this ultimate geopolitical accolade – as Peter Hitchens doubtless thinks he should – he’ll add his august name to the long list of previous worthy winners. Such as:
Woodrow Wilson, for dragging America kicking and screaming into the First World War against the express wishes of Congress.
Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, for handing South Vietnam over to the communists. Tho had the decency to turn the prize down; Kissinger didn’t. That prompted Tom Lehrer’s remark that Henry accepting the Prize made political satire redundant.
Mikhail Gorbachev, for transferring power in Russia from the Party to the KGB and killing merely hundreds in the process, rather than the millions he could have killed. His staunch denial that anything untoward had happened at Chernobyl must have been a contributing factor as well.
Yasser Arafat, for murdering people with conventional weapons, rather than nuclear ones. Col. Putin of course did use such weapons to murder Alexander Litvinenko in London, but the yield was too low to count.
Al Gore, for producing a mendacious film about global warming that nonetheless served the useful purpose of making people feel guilty whenever they reach for an aerosol or car keys.
Barack Obama, presumably for having been a community organiser in Chicago. It couldn’t have been for anything he had done subsequently because, well, having just been elected President, he hadn’t done anything yet.
Actually, I’ve been a bit slipshod in listing Col. Putin’s indisputable qualifications for the Prize. It’s not only his heroic attempts to pacify the Ukraine that merit the highest accolades.
Earlier, in 2008, he provided the same service for the people of Georgia who forgot all the good things Russia in general and the KGB in particular had done for them. As a result of Col. Putin’s short and sharp war, Georgia finally acquired a government unlikely to go to war with Col. Putin – after all, it was he who appointed it. Peace ensued.
The same goes for Chechnia. Until Col. Putin sorted it out, that bellicose province had been at daggers drawn with Russia for 200 years. The good colonel had two Russian blocks of flats blown up, blamed the atrocity on the Chechens and started a war that – predictably and laudably – led to peace.
Putin installed a puppet government, gave it a free licence to run not only Chechnia but also the Moscow criminal underworld, and if that doesn’t qualify him as a peacemaker I don’t know what would.
And let’s not forget that Col. Putin has shown the world how to resolve hostage crises to everybody’s satisfaction (except perhaps the hostages’).
In 2002 some Muslim terrorists in Moscow took over a theatre full of culture seekers. In 2004 other Muslim terrorists grabbed a Beslan school full of pupils. In both instances, Col. Putin applied the technique pioneered at Béziers in 1209 and summed up in the command “Kill them all, God will claim his own”.
Both in Beslan and in Moscow, the terrorists and the hostages were wiped out together – in Moscow with a gas whose composition still baffles experts. This will no doubt discourage other hostage takers, promoting peace and reaffirming Col. Putin’s credentials as a Nobel seeker.
In one of those serendipities history throws up, the letter nominating Col. Putin for the prize was drafted by a chap named Beslan [sic!] Kobakhiya, who thereby has become my friend for life.
My new friend Beslan is vice-president of the organisation snappily called The International Academy of Spiritual Unity and Cooperation of Peoples of the World. According to the letter, “… [Col.] Putin makes efforts to maintain peace and tranquility not only on the territory of his own country but also actively promotes settlement of all conflicts arising on the planet,” and truer words have never been spoken.
In case you’re wondering, my friend Beslan’s group is on the list of those approved to proffer Nobel nominations, and quite right too. Moreover, its nomination has received a weighty support from the Russian singer and MP Iosif Kobzon, denied entry to the United States for his widely publicised links to organised crime.
Allow me to remind you that the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.
This describes Col. Putin so accurately that, as far as I’m concerned, there’s only one potential winner. To join me and Peter Hitchens in expressing support, write to: Col. (ret.) V.V. Putin, c/o FSB (former KGB) Headquarters, No. 1/3 Lubianka Square, Moscow, Russia.