THE BOOK

In his new book, The Real Nobel Peace Prize, the author and lawyer Fredrik S. Heffermehl explains how Alfred Nobel, over 50 years before the first nuclear bomb, saw what was coming and established a prize to rescue humanity from the scourge of war. Instead of cultivating enemies we need to cultivate co-operation, unity, common and enforced global laws – there is no other way to safety than abolishing the military threat to us all.

Almost all of us have a deep wish that the nonsense of war must stop. It will not happen by itself, only if we get our act together, across all borders and beliefs. History tells us that no amount of death technology will ever keep us safe from new wars, fighter planes, supersonic missiles, nuclear bombs, do the direct opposite. How can we turn the tide?

In the book Heffermehl evaluates the work of the Norwegian award committee and shows how it never delivered on its main obligation, to clarify and promote the high purpose of Alfred Nobel´s prize. Only around 32% of all awarded prizes are reasonably within Nobel´s main purpose, a demilitarization of international relations. The book then offers an unprecedented year-by-year evaluation of who should have won the prizes 1901-2022. This study, the main content of the book, is a unique listing of the forces, people, and ideas, that sought to turn the tide and establish a new, demilitarized world order.

The result is a very different perspective on history, an analysis revealing a panorama of people and ideas that have been suppressed by the social forces to whom peace would be bad for business and who therefore keep all nations, all of us, locked in a steadily expanding, high-risk, system. Since nations seem unable to break free of their dysfunctional patterns, initiatives to build a new, co-operative world order must come from other quarters. The author points to civil society organizations, cities, trade unions – and the Nobel Peace Prize. In his new book, to be launched on 11. November, Heffermehl underscores that the Norwegian Nobel Committee has a legally binding obligation to serve Nobel´s idea, and that the task of the Norwegian Parliament is to elect a committee of people in committed service to Alfred Nobel´s visionary idea of how to secure world peace.