2013 Nobel Peace Prize Winner Fails to Challenge US Power: Critics

The 2013 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the group that is in charge of enforcing the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention worldwide and is currently working to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile per the ultimatum given by the United States.

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While the group has worked for two decades to dismantle the world’s collections of chemical weapons, several critics have hesitated to praise the decision.

Current weakness in OPCW leadership, argues leading Middle East scholar Stephen Zunes, lies in its failure to challenge countries such as the U.S., Israel, and Egypt over their well-documented stockpiles.

This weakness, Zunes argues, is a direct result of the Bush administration’s role in pushing out former OPCW leader Jose Bustani, who pressed for the inspection of U.S. chemical weapons facilities “with the same vigor it did for other countries” and pressed “to get Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention and open their facilities to surprise inspections [that] would undermine U.S. claims that Iraq was still developing them.”

The current OPCW, Zunes argues, “has been far weaker and more averse to challenging great power prerogatives, as indicated by the fact that they are currently in the process of eliminating Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal while the vast stockpiles belonging to U.S. allies Israel and Egypt remain intact.”