This is nothing new but has been going on for a long time, giving the prize away to affect current policy, or to acknowledge a darling of the left.
2002: Jimmy Carter -- a nice guy, but I can't think of a single war he has stopped.
2001: Kofi Annan and the United Nations (!)
1994: Yassir Arafat shared the prize with Israelis Peres and Rabin
1990: Gorbachev won the prize, but not Reagan. Gorby certainly deserved it, because it was his decisions that held the hand of the monsters in East Germany, but it should have been a shared prize.
Unfortunately, the peace prize decisions have been political for the past 20 years. Take at look at the URL for the rest.
http://almaz.com/nobel/peace/peace.html
See my tag line to find out just what he started.