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Barack Obama and the Nobel Prize for Peace                                                                                    

Posted at: Oct/15/2009 : Posted by: mel

Related Category: Perspectives,

It was recently announced that President Barack Obama had been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. This announcement sparked criticism, controversy and praise. I have mixed feeling on the award and will try to unload my thoughts with some direction and hope they lead to a conclusion.

"Alfred Nobel wrote that the prize should go to the person who has contributed most to the development of peace in the previous year." Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland singled out Obama's efforts to heal the divide between the West and the Muslim world and scale down a Bush-era proposal for an anti-missile shield in Europe. Jagland went on to say "Who has done more for that than Barack Obama?.... All these things have contributed to – I wouldn't say a safer world – but a world with less tension." Specifically, the Nobel citation said “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples".

There are a lot of ways to look at this and in an attempt to be open minded I will try and visit all the views I can think of.

First and foremost I am confused over the difference between tangible and hopeful. I honestly didn’t believe President Obama had actually done anything truly measurable towards world peace at this point. I know, he made a speech at Cairo University, he made another speech from Berlin, and yes…he canceled deployment of a missile defense technology in Eastern Europe. These are all good starts and may lead to very tangible changes in the world over the next few years but many world leaders have done and said more without receiving a Nobel prize for peace. So he's being awarded an honor normally reserved to acknowledge years of decisive accomplishments, or singularly inspirational and powerful efforts, on behalf of world peace and stability. I personally think of Mikhail Gorbachev and his contributions to opening up eastern Europe and bringing down the Berlin Wall warrant recognition though it was not during the last year. Maybe we should look to Bill Clinton and his trip to the Korean peninsula?

Maybe this is more a world sentiment about the Bush era administration and the resulting world view of the United States. As we know, our nation has been viewed around the world for many years as a dangerous maverick, supposedly intent on our own narrowly defined self-interest, and dismissive of many other interests held dear by other nations including climate treaties, the holding of terror suspects, and our presence in the Middle East. I don’t personally feel that this can really be changed in a single years. Much as small town politics always shows disdain for the “well off family in the big house on the hill”, the United States will never really be a peer among many. As is typical in the have and have-not split, the poorer nations will always argue that the United States and other wealthy nations should be doing more to help them. Despite the response to a few recent gestures, ultimately, many in the world will go back to viewing the United States as arrogant, snobbish, or self serving as soon as we are not helping their agenda of that specific time.

If this is a strong hint to say, “we like what you have done, do more of it” the challenge is how high the bar has been raised. The Nobel Prize for Peace adds to President Obama’s celebrity and can potentially hurt his ability to negotiate in the future any real change. Where ego’s are at stake there is now a bigger desire to get more, or unseat and thereby upstage him in a treaty or other discussion. With this award in his resume, there is also the possibility that any effort not yielding fruit is perceived as failure rather than a good start. There is of coarse the hope that this honor will perhaps make it at least slightly more difficult for antagonistic world leaders to dismiss peace efforts by the Obama administration in a glib or casual manner.

Throughout history, public honors have generated controversy. As the story goes during a ceremony in Rome dedicating a new statue to a prominent citizen, the great statesman Cato the Elder was asked by an admirer why there was no statue in his honor anywhere in the city. He famously replied, "I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I do have one." Maybe the sentiment from the Nobel Committee is more an action of almost desperate hope. A hope that the United States, more capable than many countries can find some way to bring real change and potentially real peace to the world.

I think about my own household. It is not unusual for my wife to comment to the kids that "the dogs haven't been fed yet." It is normally not the case that she is merely making a comment about the facts of the matter at hand. She is offering a prompting, or implicitly making a suggestion, that one of our children should feed the dogs. So if the children reply, "That's interesting. I wonder why?" and continue to play video game they have missed something important. I am going to be optimist and believe the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to our president should be understood in a similar way. There's a subtle and important difference between what is being said and what is being done in the proclamation of the award. The controversy that has broken out is all about whether the honor is merited by anything tangible President Obama has yet accomplished. But this may be too simplistic a view. History has shown that titles and honors are indeed often given out on the basis of merit. Merit can be judged in many different ways, depending on the nature and context of what is being evaluated. I believe that in this case the merit is in the urgings, promises, and acknowledgement for change. Maybe this means that in truth the honor goes to the American People for their election of a president whose election is a hope and promice of change.

I don’t feel the honor was warranted at this time as I personally like honors associated with tangible accomplishments, (President Carter and the Sinai accords). This prize does speak loudly to a world view that change is needed and that the United States is still looked to for leadership, but maybe not with such a heavy hand as was used in the Bush era. Now that the honor has been given it is more what President Obama can do to effectively leverage this celebrity status on the world stage, and be taken seriously on the issue. There are a lot of important things that need to be discussed and spending energy haranguing the President over an award rather than stepping up to help find solutions seems to be almost frivolous and petty.

There is no doubt that if ultimately Obama is unable to change the world, he will still not have done badly to have changed the view that many have of the United States. Sometimes optimism and perception are almost as good as results.

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