(I dont know much about Kissinger so putting him aside)<p>I think you misunderstand the purpose of the prize. Its not about &quot;these are saintly people who have never hurt a fly&quot; nor is it &quot;here are organizations whose politics we agree with&quot;.<p>Its a real world reward for people and organizations that try to pull peace from the midst of violence. It shouldn&#x27;t be a surprise that a lot of the people who get it have been heavily involved in violence simply because those are the people that have the power to change the path they and their followers are on.<p>Yasser Arafat shared it with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, tried to move the Israel&#x2F;Palestine situation onto the road for peace, they may not have achieved it but for a while it appeared they might, and at least they showed that an agreement wasn&#x27;t entirely impossible.<p>The EU was set up to prevent war in western Europe (cradle of two world wars in less then 30 years), form that point of view it was entirely successful, if only because we spent the next 50 years discussing the exact definition of a banana.<p>The UN has been the place every country in the world goes to to present its case against other countries, arms is now no longer the only resort in a dispute. Its also the place where peace is negotiated and that provides neutral 3rd party troops to enforce it. Sure its not prevented every war ever but its done a lot better job then anything else in the history of the world ever.<p>The weakest case is for Barack Obama but people all over the world looked at him and said &quot;look, a non-white man is the most powerful man in the world, maybe there is hope for a fairer world after all!&quot; and so as an example to people world wide who know nothing about US politics and care less, that a fairer more equal world might be acheivable he is still not a bad choice.<p>It also shouldn&#x27;t be a surprise that sometimes the recipients fail, the world is a messy place, but its not about rewarding perfection its about rewarding the trying, and through the reward encouraging others to do the same.<p>Don&#x27;t think of the prize as being for believing in peace, think of it as being a reward for having the guts to try and change the old ways of violence and it makes much more sense.<p>Of course sometimes they get it wrong, but at least the prize committee tries.