What was to be inevitable

Why the European Union for the Nobel Peace Prize?  A puzzle in two pieces:

Piece the first
Until a few years ago, when the Indiana Jones series was a trilogy, my least favorite of the three installments was The Temple of Doom.  My least favorite scene was when the priest reached into a mans chest and pulled out the man's heart.  The chest closes up and the unattached heart continues to beat and the man continues to live; for a few more moments anyway, before he disappears into a fiery chasm.  At first I did not enjoy it because it terrified me, but to deflect that terror I eventually convinced myself that I was merely frustrated by how unrealistic it all was.

It wasn't until my  college after spending a great deal of time in the company of a young lady named *****, that I learned that in fact a man's beating heart could be torn from his chest and set on fire in front of him while he watched.  What's more, throwing that man into a fiery chasm would be a mercy compared to making him stumble through his life and Econ finals while simultaneously dead inside but painfully aware of his burning heart lost out somewhere in the nether (though actually being dead inside makes you a superior economist).

So I began to better understand this concept of an organism or organization being able to exist and operate as usual, while being effectively gutted of its inner impetus or fuel so doomed to eventually collapse and die though the death stroke was delivered long before the fall.  And while I don't believe I understand enough to identify whether we have reached 'peak oil', 'national debt point of impossible payback' or the 'global warming point of no return' I entertain the possibility that in any of these cases we may have already incurred dire and unavoidable consequences to be visited on us in the future. 

Piece the Second
Though nominated several times during his lifetime, Gandhi never won a Nobel Peace Prize.  If the prize could be awarded posthumously, he almost certainly would have been awarded one by now, but, like most beauty pageants, you cannot be nominated after your death. 

All Together Now
I suspect that the five Vikings who make up the Norwegian Nobel Committee actually see the current  EU as a scuttled boat that is only above the water for a matter of time, but will eventually be filled with and sunk by the water that once buoyed it up.  So in standard Viking fashion they are endeavoring to fill it with grave goods (items and treasures to ease and join the departed in the afterlife).  If they wait too much longer there will be no union to award, so it had to be this year or never.  Long story short: short the Euro, man the longboats.