How low can they go? Mohamed ElBaradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency win the Nobel Peace Prize.

TEN years ago, a conservative writer asked a strange but pertinent question: Is the Nobel Peace Prize worth winning anymore? The occasion was the giving of the prize to Joseph Rotblat, a physicist who had spent his long life colluding with the Soviet Union in a bogus anti-nuclear movement. The conservative writer, I must confess, was ... yours truly. And little has changed, in the ensuing decade.

The problem with writing off the Nobel Peace Prize altogether is that, occasionally, they give it to someone worthy: an Andrei Sakharov, a Lech Walesa, a Kim Dae-jung. But are they peace prizes, or, more accurately, freedom prizes? What do we mean by "peace"? Merely the absence of conflict, or the kind of peace that only freedom and dignity can bring? Prime Minister Thatcher put this well during the Cold War: "We speak of peace, yes, but whose peace? Poland's? Bulgaria's? The peace of the grave?"

Winner of this year's prize is Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Or rather, he is co-winner, with the IAEA itself. In a similar manner, the Nobel committee gave the prize jointly to Kofi Annan and the United Nations. That was in 2001, a month after the 9/11 attacks. It seemed obvious that the committee wanted to send a message: "Don't go it alone, George W., the United Nations and multilateralism are paramount." They often do that, the Nobel committee.

In 2002, they gave the prize to Jimmy Carter, as a way of giving President Bush and the United States "a kick in the leg." (Strange Norwegian expression.) That was the acknowledgement of the chairman of the committee, Mr. Gunnar Berge. Carter did not demur, but accepted his longsought honor with grinning pleasure. When they gave the prize to Joseph Rotblat, the committee was sending a message to the French, believe it or not--who were testing nuclear weapons in the South Pacific. Chirac et al. proceeded undaunted.

This year, the committee went out of its way to deny that they were tweaking anybody: "This is not a kick in the leg to any country," said the current chairman, Ole Danbolt Mjoes. But it would be hard to interpret otherwise. In giving their prize for literature to Harold Pinter, the Nobel people were honoring just about the most anti-American writer around, and one whose literary gifts are not towering. And in giving their peace prize to Mohamed ElBaradei, they have honored a man who has opposed and sought to thwart the United States at nearly every turn.

The committee has always been naive or offensive in nuclear matters. In 1962, they gave their prize to Linus Pauling, a brilliant chemist who believed and peddled every anti-nuke shibboleth. And then in 1985 they gave their prize to International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, whose chairman was a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party (not known as a peace organization to human beings behind the Iron Curtain). This man--Yevgeny Chazov--signed the document that launched the official campaign against Andrei Sakharov, winner of the peace prize in 1975. Such is the screwy world of the Nobel committee.

Joseph Rotblat was almost too egregious for words. Rather than recapitulate my 1995 piece, I will relate just one fact: Rotblat and his band were decorated, not only by the Nobel committee, but by the Czechoslovakian dictator Husak and the Polish dictator Jaruzelski. These awards were not given idly.

But try a second fact: Rotblat & Co. derided Israel's fear of the nuclear facility built by Saddam Hussein. Israel blew that to smithereens; they were not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their deed; after the Gulf War, however, the U.S. secretary of defense, Dick Cheney, thanked them for it.

It is reasonable to assume that the Nobel committee was saying, among other things, "Ha, ha," when it gave the prize to ElBaradei and the IAEA: "Ha, ha, George W., this agency swore that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction, and they were right, and you were wrong."

But what had the IAEA's record in this area been? On the eve of the Gulf War, the agency gave every assurance that Iraq was in full compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. (Incidentally, Saddam Hussein's government served on the IAEA's board of governors from 1980 to 1991.) After the war, the then--director general, Hans Blix, admitted, "It's correct to say that the IAEA was fooled by the Iraqis." It is also correct to say that, in 2003, a second President Bush was not prepared to accept the word of the IAEA, or of the Hussein regime itself.

Mohamed ElBaradei succeeded Blix in 1997, having worked for the agency since 1984. He is an Egyptian, a diplomat-lawyer, and the classic international-organization man. He is not dissimilar to his fellow Nobelist, Kofi Annan, in this respect. And he has a peculiar view of nuclear weaponry: believing that an established nuclear power (such as the United States) has no real right to block others from acquiring the same destructiveness. Here's ElBaradei in the New York Times, last year: "We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue weapons of mass destruction yet morally acceptable for others to rely on them for security." That is a staggering statement for the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency to make.

ElBaradei had long been a candidate to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He was not informed in advance by the committee, but learned of his victory from television. He was watching the announcement, live: "I was about to start grumbling about the choice," he later said, but then he heard his name, amid the Norwegian talk. "It was just a delightful surprise." No doubt. ElBaradei understandably basked in this affirmation of his work, saying that the prize meant "the international community has full confidence in the IAEA." Furthermore, "the prize recognizes the role of multilateralism in resolving all of the challenges we are facing today."

And what has the IAEA done? This is something of a rude question, because the idea of the IAEA--like the idea of the U.N.--is more beautiful than the IAEA as a reality. Joshua Muravchik, in his new book The Future of the United Nations, puts it nicely: "For many of those who value [the U.N] most highly, its performance is not the issue." Rather, what matters is some collectivist ideal, and no boat-rocking or moral kvetching by the United States. When the Nobel committee gives its peace prize to Kofi Annan, or Mohamed ElBaradei, they are saying, "We are for what ought to be, instead of what is"--a world dependent for peace on American strength.

Back in January, I watched ElBaradei at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland. He was on a panel with the Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi. They gave the appearance of being chums and allies, and spoke as though Washington's concern about Iranian nukes were terribly silly. After all, Bush and his team had been wrong about Saddam, yes? And yet Iran succeeded in fooling the IAEA about its program for 18 years. It took an Iranian dissident group to blow the whistle on the nuclearizing mullahs. Even now, the IAEA is refusing to refer the Iran case to the Security Council, despite what appears its statutory obligation to do so.

But what would the Security Council do anyway? Russia and China sit on it, and they are friends and suppliers of Iran--just as they are friends and suppliers of genocidal Sudan, another arena of U.N. failure.

And what of North Korea? It seems certain that Pyongyang developed its nukes after signing the nonproliferation treaty, and while "dancing around the IAEA," as Muravchik puts it.

Perhaps most galling in ElBaradei's post-victory remarks was his taking credit for Libya--for bringing Moammar Qaddafi to heel. It strains credulity to suggest that the IAEA had anything at all to do with that. As Jed Babbin explains in his own recent book on the U.N.--Inside the Asylum--President Bush started the Proliferation Security Initiative in 2003, basically to do the work of the IAEA. Eleven nations operate under the PSI, blessedly free of the U.N. framework. One of these nations, Italy, interdicted damning materials going to Libya. That, coupled with America's performance in Iraq, prompted Qaddafi to fess up and give in.

It may be argued that there is only so much the IAEA can do, and that its relative impotence is not its fault. That may be. As Muravchik writes, "Just as U.N. peacekeeping can work well where the parties all want peace, so the IAEA provides mutual reassurance among states of good faith." That's why the agency spends the bulk of its "safeguards" budget monitoring--get ready--Canada, Japan, and Germany! "But for 'rogue' regimes, the IAEA has presented few barriers."

For which, again, the IAEA is not necessarily to be condemned. But give it the Nobel Peace Prize, the world's most sanctified award?

Last year, the committee honored a Kenyan woman who plants trees and claims that AIDS is a Western plot to wipe out black Africans. The chairman of the committee remarked, "We have added a new dimension to the concept of peace." In their choice of ElBaradei and the IAEA, they have added nothing new--but it has precious little to do with peace.