Nobel Peace Prize winners: Sometimes, there’s no peace

President Obama, the Dalai Lama, the guy who got the 1935 award for fighting to stop the rearmament of Germany. Not all the winners achieved peace at the time of the award . . . or ever. Many people are calling this year’s winner, the European Union, a real head-scratcher.

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2012: The European Union

Huh? The E.U. and its forerunners have for "over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe," the Norwegian Nobel Committee citation said. The choice, however, provoked criticism that the Nobel committee has strayed from its ideals, that the besieged E.U. is plodding and bureaucratic as it tries to corral a region beset by a debt crisis and social unrest.

OLIVIER HOSLET / EPA

2009: Barack Obama

Even the new U.S. president didn't think he deserved this one, and he was cautious to note that he wasn't excluding war from America's options. He still commands U.S. soldiers in warfare in Afghanistan and oversees drone strikes and other actions in countries such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

Win McNamee / Getty Images

1994: Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin

The judges honored the Palestinian leader, Israeli foreign minister and Israeli premier for ''opportunities for a new development towards fraternity in the Middle East.'' The world is still awaiting a peaceful end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

/ Getty Images

1993: Nelson Mandela, Frederik Willem de Klerk

While the nation has endured violence in the years since, there is little question that de Klerk and Mandela ushered in profound change. De Klerk had freed the African National Congress leader after 27 years of imprisonment and stepped aside as the former prisoner was democratically elected the president of South Africa.

Gerard Julien / AFP/Getty Images

1991: Aung Sang Suu Kyi

Judges honored the Burmese opposition leader "for her nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights.'' It took more than two decades for the Burmese military junta to free her from house arrest and begin the reforms she long advocated. (At left, Aung San Suu Kyi as she was presented with a U.S. Congressional Gold Medal in September 2012.)

Alex Wong / Getty Images

1989: The Dalai Lama

Judges awarded the prize to the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader just months after China violently suppressed a pro-democracy awakening in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. "In his struggle for the liberation of Tibet [he] consistently has opposed the use of violence. He has instead advocated peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect in order to preserve the historical and cultural heritage of his people.'' Tibet, overtaken by Beijing in 1950, remains under Chinese control, and its culture has been besieged.

/ AFP/Getty Images

1975: Andrei Sakharov

Judges awarded the nuclear scientist and Soviet dissident an award for his "struggle for human rights, for disarmament, and for cooperation between all nations.'' While he lived to see his nation move from Communist dictatorship toward a parliamentary democracy, and he found himself elected to the legislature, Russia now faces criticism of tightened persecution of dissidents and a strengthening of central government under Vladimir Putin, a former Soviet secret police chief. (At left, Sakharov and his wife, Yelena Bonner, in Moscow in 1987, shortly after his release from internal exile.)

Daniel Janin / AFP/Getty Images

1973: Henry Kissinger, Lu Duc Tho

Judges gave the U.S. secretary of state and the Vietnamese foreign minister the award for agreeing "to bring about a cease-fire in the Vietnam war and a withdrawal of the American forces.'' Many Americans thought the agreement came years too late; American troops were gone within two years. (Left, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in Paris in 1976.)

/ AP

1964: Martin Luther King Jr.

The judges called the U.S. civil rights leader "the first person in the Western world to have shown us that a struggle can be waged without violence." King, assassinated in 1968, didn't live to see some of the massive social changes that he advocated. (Left, King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963, where he delivered his "I Have a Dream'' speech.)

/ AFP/Getty Images

1935: Carl von Ossietzsky

By the time German peace activist and journalist Carl von Ossietzky won the award, he was already seriously ill with tuberculosis. Judges hailed his efforts to publicize how Germany was violating World War I peace terms in rearming. Ossietsky was convicted of treason in 1932, imprisoned the following year and detained (and abused) in concentration camps. When he won the award, he wasn't allowed to accept it -- and the German press was forbidden to mention it.

/ AP

1919: Woodrow Wilson

Judges gave the award to the U.S. president ''for his crucial role in establishing'' the League of Nations. However, the League, a precursor to the United Nations, collapsed within two decades, partly because the United States refused to join. (Wilson, right, in 1919, with Britain's David Lloyd George, Italy's Vittorio Orlando and France's Georges Clemenceau.)

/ AP

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