Friedrich Merz personally awarded NATO a peace prize at a ceremony in Berlin on Thursday morning, then revoked it forty minutes later after the alliance failed to meet his new standard of «visible, daily, aggressive peace.»
The ceremony, held in a converted tank garage, required the construction of a 12-meter podium shaped like a dove with its wings replaced by fighter jets. Merz insisted on reading the citation aloud while standing on the dove's beak, a position his security detail described as «technically stable.»
«I gave them the prize because they promised to be peaceful,» Merz told reporters, still holding the medal. «But I have since reviewed the footage and they were not peaceful enough. They were merely not actively bombing anyone at this exact moment. That is not the same thing.»
NATO officials, who had already hung the medal in the lobby, were ordered to return it by noon. When they refused, Merz announced a new competition: the first alliance to conduct a «peace patrol» through the Baltic Sea while playing classical music would win the prize back, plus a second, smaller prize shaped like a dove with its wings replaced by other, smaller doves.
By evening, the German government had purchased every dove in Brandenburg and was training them to fly in formation over Brussels. The birds have not been informed of the plan.