The material aspect of making peace
"...the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".
Just to remind us the point of the prize.
Amidst discussion of this latest prize whose bottom-line explanation of why the prize was given maps well on to the original intent ("for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" sounds similar to Nobel's phrasing, doesn't it?), it's informative to look back at prior prize winners as well.
If you feel that the current prize winner hasn't "earned" the prize yet via material accomplishments, you wouldn't be far off from describing the long-term legacy of many Nobelists in this area. Some time spent looking through the history of American peace Nobelists suggests both the fundamental enabling hopefulness of America and how often future events can seem to "disqualify" these hopeful efforts.
Charles Gates Dawes shared the 1925 peace prize, which was given in recognition of his effort to restructure war reparations in the wake of World War I. Dawes' suggestion was the the extraordinarily putative reparations regime should be restructured to match what the post-war German nation was actually able to pay, to avoid reigniting conflict in the region. This clearly did not work out in the long term, but was a precursor to the approach that America espoused followed the disaster of the second World War, where we very specifically punished the instigators within each warring nation and then rebuilt them at our own expense.
So Dawes was, in a sense, a failure at the task for which he won his Nobel - but he nonetheless set up a manner of thinking we successfully applied to keep a repeat performance from becoming an endless cycle.
Frank Billings Kellogg took the 1929 Nobel prize for his role in creating the Briand-Kellogg Pact. The Pact was Kellogg's extension of an original treaty proposed solely between France and the United States. Kellogg suggested it be left open for all signatories and, concisely, be a promise to end the use of war as an instrument of national policy. In other words, Kellogg set the initial precedent, repeated in the U.N. Charter, that war is only to occur in self defense.
A number of the signatories to the Briand-Kellogg Pact went on to use war as an instrument of national policy, including Germany, Italy, Japan, China, Egypt, and the Soviet Union (and, arguably as always, us). This suggests that the Pact is a failure, which in turn would suggest that Kellogg is retroactively undeserving. Nonetheless, he set the standard for our modern world of when war is or is not acceptable and helped to create a world where many of us wouldn't conceive of cavalierly starting a war just to gain territory or acquire a resource.
We can go on like this. Unlike the science Nobels, which are given only after the accomplishment being awarded is concretely done, the peace Nobels are about working toward Nobel's stated goals. Progress in this arena is incremental, and often retreats in the gaps between periods of forward motion. Thus, in keeping to the intent of our favorite former armaments manufacturer, we really do need to look back at the last couple years and simply ask, "Who has done the most to promote fraternity between nations, the abolition of armies, and the promotion of peace?"