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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded today. Spoiler alert, not to President Trump, to the UN World Food Program. Here's Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Nobel Committee talking about why that agency, the world's largest food assistance program was picked for its work this year.

Berit Reiss-Andersen: The combination of violent conflict and the pandemic has led to a dramatic rise in the number of people living on the brink of starvation. In the face of the pandemic, the World Food Program has demonstrated an impressive ability to intensify its effort. As the organization itself has stated, until the day we have the vaccine, food is the best vaccine against chaos.

Brian: Now last year, the World Food Program says it served 97 million people in 88 countries. We've seen the long lines of food banks here. Imagine the situation in countries already dealing with armed conflict and the pandemic. To talk about today's prize, I'm joined by Anne Applebaum, Atlantic staff writer who covers national politics and foreign policy and is the author of Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lore of the Authoritarian State. Hi, Anne, welcome back to WNYC. Thanks for coming on for this.

Anne Applebaum: Thanks for having me.

Brian: We'll note that you are not a big fan of the Nobel Peace Prize in general, and we'll get to that, but for people who don't know the World Food Program or why it won, can you describe what it is and what it does?

Anne: The World Food Program is a UN agency, one of many UN agencies that very quietly and without being noticed much of the time does exactly what you've just described it do. It attempts to get food to people in difficult situations, particularly in conflict situations, who have no other source of nutrition. I should say the nature of what it does means that it is sometimes controversial because it deals with dictatorships and with regimes that are at war. It has been accused in the past of making deals, for example, with the Syrian government, food is often used as a weapon in conflicts, but generally speaking, it is seen, of the many UN agencies, as one that is not controversial.

That it is one of the ones that the US supports. The US no longer supports all UN agencies and it is seen as a neutral, an institution that the world has banded together because we don't want people to starve, and the UN food program is one of the ways we prevent that from happening.

Brian: I guess we should say, and you were making this point, that the Nobel Committee linked hunger as a cause and effect of the arm violence that the Nobel Peace Prize is supposed to work against, so this seems like hunger relief, which maybe doesn't have to do with peace per se, but this prize fits in with the whole endeavor's goals, yes.

Anne: Their definition of what is peace is very broad and has changed over time and seems to mean different things at different moments. Yes, you could argue that being fed is one of the things that keeps the peace, or you could argue that it's not, but the committee may have wanted to avoid controversy, they may have wanted to award a good effort. They swing back and forth between giving prizes to people who are actually involved in peacemaking and finding solutions and giving general prizes to good organizations or organizations they think are good that are related or maybe only distantly related to the question of peace.

Brian: Right, and sometimes I think to people who are working for human rights or democracy, but do you know how much the US contributes to the World Food Program in absolute terms or compared to other countries since you said this is one of the UN agencies that the United States supports? I'm thinking of the fact that President Trump pulled us out of the World Health Organization partly because he argues that other countries, especially China were getting over on us with the percentage that comes from here compared to elsewhere.

Anne: Funding for the World Food Program, I have in front of me is $7.2 billion. It's a very large program of which the largest donors are the United States at 2.5 billion, and the European Union at 1.1 billion. This is a program that the US continues to contribute to and actually, I should say, that it's led, at the moment, by an American, which is important inside the UN system. It's one of the parts of the UN that we are still part of, but you are right to make the comparison to the WHO, which is an equally, if not even more important international organization which enjoys an enormous amount of respect and influence around the world, and which President Trump has said we will be pulling out of.

It's a long complicated story that it is true that the WHO seem to be a beat behind at the beginning of coronavirus crisis. It was overly willing to accept information that was being given from China, not to second guess it. Its leader particularly has been very cautious about criticizing China. On the other hand, the World Health Organization is still the institution that most of the world is going to turn to. Most of the world doesn't have a zone a pharmaceutical industry is going to turn to for vaccines, for cures, for advice, for public health suggestions about the virus, so pulling out of it now doesn't really do anything except give China even more influence in it than it had before.

Brian: Listeners, we can take a few phone calls. If anyone has any connections in any way to the World Food Program and want to sing its praises or any comment on this year's Nobel Peace Prize or the importance of fighting hunter globally and not just in our own backyards, or the importance of staying engaged internationally, or if you want to nominate someone other than President Trump, who's already been nominated for next year's award, or any question for Anne Applebaum, 646-435-7280. Do you want to tell us why you're skeptic about the institution of the Nobel Peace Prize and to what degree?

Anne: The Nobel Peace Prize was set up by the Swedish multi-millionaire at the time, Alfred Nobel. Whereas most of the Nobel prizes are given out but in Stockholm by Swedish committees, this one is given out in Norway. The reason was that he thought Norway was such a provincial country and it was so outside the mainstream of politics that the Norwegians who decided who would get the prize wouldn't be influenced by big politics and political considerations in their choices.

While that's true, it does mean that this is a prize that is essentially decided upon by five Norwegians appointed by the Norwegian parliament, and therefore, to treat it as if it had some stamp of quality or recognition above and beyond that has always struck me as very odd. As I've said, it's gone to a huge range of people from very worthy to very unworthy. Some years they give it to people directly involved in conflict, some years they give it to people who seem to have nothing to do with peace at all. Famously, they gave it to Barack Obama before he'd ever done anything seemingly just because he was not George W Bush.

Its eccentricity is defined by the fact that it's essentially a very small group of people in a very small country giving out this award, and I've never quite understood why it has the impact and echo that it does. The second question about it, of course, is that when you give people a prize for peacemaking, you don't really know what's going to happen next. I think they've given out, if I'm not wrong, I would have to check this, I think it's at least three prizes were given for people who had supposedly resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and since that conflict never was resolved, you can question retrospectively what was the point of the prize.

More often recently, they've been giving it to neutral or inoffensive organizations that seemed to do good things rather than people who are actually making peace because it really is in fact hard to determine what that means.

Brian: Let's take a phone call, Ken in Manhattan, you're on WNYC, an ex-staff member of the WFP. Thanks for calling in.

Ken: Hello, Brian, this is Ken, can you hear me?

Brian: Sure can.

Ken: Great. Thanks so much for taking the call, a long time listener. I think the second time I've called. Yes, I was a staff member at World Food Program back just before 911 and for a couple of years after that as a senior executive heading their ICT department. It was then that I really got to know the UN. I've worked in international development for many years before then, but since leaving there, I came to the United Nations in New York working in a coordinating role for technology.

I haven't been listening much, I've been busy this morning, and so I can't really speak to the value of awarding the award to WFP, but I can say that they're an organization that is pretty well-known, but I don't think people really understand fully the impact that it has on so many lives around the world. It is the world's largest logistics organization that uses technology extremely well to deliver resources to people who are displaced globally and those that are just simply in need of food, which is only increasing. The UN itself, I think, frankly, as an entity globally is poorly understood by most people, especially in this country, but WFP, I can't think highly of it.

My wife and I both worked there. I actually met her there and she worked there for many years as well and an extraordinary organization in what they do.

Brian: Ken, thank you very much. I'm going to go on to Kevin in Manhasset. You're on WNYC, also former UN staffer. Kevin, Hi.

Kevin: Hi, thanks for taking my call. Just to make a quick point, it's great that the US supports WFP, the head of WFP is traditionally an American, but I think it's also to point out that the US actually benefits from its participation in the World Food Program in the form of, in fact, using surplus US food that US farmers get paid for that the US donates to WFP. Maybe Anne Applebaum can clarify, but there used to be a rule by which WFP food from the US was only transported in US vessels. I think, not to say that it's not good that the US supports WFP, that's great, but it's not as though it's purely an altruistic and one-way contribution.

Brian: Anne.

Anne: I don't know whether US vessels are, I'm not an expert on the World Food Program. One of the criticisms of aid, not so much food aid but more generally of aid is that very often development aid is given in a way that it benefits the donor country as much, if not more than the country that is receiving it. You can say that's wrong, or you can say that's a way of ensuring that the aid continues to be give, there are different views of this.

Brian: The WFP comes under the same criticism as many NGOs that their work supports corrupt governments and distorts those economies by crowding out local agriculture by functioning as farm subsidies for farmers in donor nations like the US as the caller points out, do you see that critique gaining traction?

Anne: That critique has always been with us. What the WFP does that is particularly useful is that it delivers food in conflict zones, which, of course, also creates controversy as well. The way in which aid is given, the degree to which it can distort local economies, the degree to which it supports agricultural systems in donor countries is always worth discussing and examining. As I said, because of the WFP particular role in conflict zones, it's considered, in those circumstances, different rules apply.

Brian: We'll continue in a minute with Anne Applebaum from the Atlantic who's looking at this year's winner of the Nobel Peace Prize announced today, the UN's World Food Program, but we're also going to touch on some of her latest writing in the Atlantic articles called Eel Donald and The Election is in Danger, Prepare Now. We'll find out how, stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC with Anne Applebaum from the Atlantic. The Nobel Peace Prize awarded this morning to the World Food Program of the United Nations. Real quick on this, a caller wants to know, I'm not going to have time to put her on the air, but wants to know does the UN food program do any work in the US since we have such food scarcity now?

Anne: I looked that up this morning and it looks like it doesn't. I'm not aware of it doing so, but you're right, we have come to think of ourselves always as a donor nation and never as a recipient, but we do need to re-evaluate how we relate to the rest of the world now, given the amount of poverty and what looks set to be increasing hunger in the US as well.

Brian: We used to think of ourselves as an exporter of democracy, not authoritarianism but you have two recent articles in the Atlantic, one called Eel Donald, which compares him to Mussolini in particular, and the other called The Election is in Danger, Prepare Now, and since our time is very limited, let me go to that practical one you wrote, "My Atlanta colleague, Barton Gellman, has laid out an entirely plausible scenario, one in which Trump challenges the validity of mailing ballots more numerous this year and persuade state legislatures to overrule them imposing an undemocratic result. He reported that Republican Party officials are preparing for this outcome."

Anne, the really scary part of that scenario for me is not that there might be challenges in court but that your colleague writes that state legislatures might overrule them.

Anne: This is why the article I wrote was advice to everybody to prepare for this now and to start thinking about it now and to think about what you will do as a citizen to protect the vote and to make sure that the election is a clean election over the next few weeks. Time is short, you can work as a poll worker, you can help give voter advice in your state or in other states and swing states. In the article I wrote in the Atlantic, it's got several couple of dozen links to different kinds of organizations that do this kind of work.

You can think about how you're going to talk to people about the election, how you're going to talk to people who disagree with you about it because there's going to be a lot of disagreement and anger, if Trump attempts to steal the election, if the Republican Party goes along with it, and you may have to be discussing this with your friends and colleagues, and you should join organizations now that are thinking about this. There's a great organization called Protect Democracy which you can be part of, you can get their messages, you can get their information, you can contribute to what they do.

There's the Brennan Center at NYU. Actually, it's a great institution that looks at how to protect voting rights, makes proposals on how to reform our democracy to make it work better, and it too will be tracking what happens over the next few weeks. I want people to be thinking about it and to be prepared

Brian: On Eel Donald, we could make analogies between Trump and any number of authoritarians or want to be authoritarians, why do you key on Mussolini, in particular, at this moment?

Anne: Oh, it was just the balcony, he was standing on it.

Brian: Oh. [laughs]

Anne: Trump had filmed on the balcony and I looked at it and I thought, "I know where I've seen that before," and I spent a morning looking at video of Mussolini speaking. Then the little piece I wrote was about that kind of political imagery and why people like it. You could see Mussolini on balconies and thousands of people cheering, and then of course, we all know the end of the story, Mussolini destroyed his country, created mass violence, and was himself finally murdered, and then hung upside down in a square and Milan where people abused him, but if you go back if you don't know that and you look at the scenes of the cheering crowds, you see that he understood something about mass psychology.

I just wanted to remind people that this kind of heavily-staged, obviously fake, these kind of designed political events do have a deep appeal and there are people who like them.

Brian: Anne Applebaum, staff writer from the Atlantic. I misplaced, oh, there it is. Then title of your book which is worth mentioning again, Twilight of Democracy: The seductive Lure of the Authoritarian State. Anne, thank you so much.

Anne: Thank you.

Brian: The Brian Lehrer Show is produced by Lisa Allison, Mary Croke, Zoe Azulay, Amina Srna, and Carl Boisrond. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen works on our daily podcast. By the way, sign up for our daily politics podcast. It's called Brian Lehrer: A Daily Politics Podcast at some of our national politics material and tell your friends and family members around the country because it is a national podcast. Brian Lehrer: A Daily Politics Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Our interns are Dan Girma and Erica Scully's this fall. Megan Ryan is the head of live radio, Juliana Fonda at the audio controls most days along with Liora Noam-Kravitz, Matt Marando, and Milton Ruiz.

Have a great weekend, everyone, I'm Brian Lehrer.

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