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Each year a committee of Norwegians is convened to decide what person will receive the prize endowed by Alfred Nobel to recognize “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.” Past Nobel Peace Prize honorees have ranged from visionary leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Lech Wałęsa to tireless but less visible diplomats and negotiators like Ralph Bunche and Martti Ahtisaari as well as inspirational models of self-sacrifice like Mother Teresa and Albert Schweitzer. Although there have been strongly critical reactions to selections like Henry Kissinger and Yasser Arafat, the high esteem in which most honorees are held has prompted a world full of watchers to wait each year to learn the next name lifted into the pantheon of humanity's greatest peacemakers.
The selection of President Barack Obama ’91 as this year's Peace Prize recipient was an incredible surprise and a notable event in the history of the Prize in being only the third time a sitting U.S. President has been so honored. Even the President himself was surprised by his receipt of the prize, reportedly not even aware that he had even been nominated. The shock of the news left commentators and the public disoriented, and as the novelty of the idea faded, the diversity of reactions to the President's Nobel became crystalized in opinions with little correspondence to individual political alignment.
Arch-conservatives certainly did not hesitate to co-opt this latest honor as a new focal point around which to concentrate their perpetual campaign against the President, asking the question, “What has Obama done to deserve this Prize?” and deriding it as a political maneuver by a cadre of socialist Europeans who are more enamored with Obama than his own American supporters.
On the other side of the aisle, many praised the Prize as a stamp of international approval on a drastically redesigned American foreign policy and vision of the nation within the world community. Talk, they said, is no small thing when it moves the world to forgive past failings and unite once again behind the U.S. banner. But many of the voices criticizing the Nobel committee's selection came from supporters of the President, with a common chorus soon becoming, “Too much, too soon.”
As the present controversy fades into historical evaluation, President Obama will be compared to other laureates not for the actions of his first one hundred days but for the lasting impact of his term in office, but even from the moment of its announcement, the history of the prize reveals a range of figures into which the President already fits as a rising leader of efforts at international cooperation and the limitation of the weapons of war.
To the rue of many Republicans, the conditions for Obama's success were made abundantly possible by the policies of his predecesor, George W. Bush, but this should in no way diminish the significance of actions that have changed the international tide of hostility against America which was rising throughout the Bush era. The Nobel committee has given us cause to consider that the President has thus far demonstrated a new vision of international cooperation, a new commitment to multilateralism, and a nuanced understanding of the give and take that is necessary to coax his counterparts to depart from the inherently stubborn and vindictive behavior of national leaders and humans in general.
From the moment he took office, the President expressed a desire to end the widely criticized conduct of the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, he began the acceleration of the draw down of the American presence in Iraq, and he began an extensive review of the country's goals in Afghanistan, a conflict which appears to have continuing importance in the effort to establish stability in a troubled region. In the course of his first year he has delivered speeches around the world – including his noted address in Cairo – that have laid out a vision of peaceful coexistence between Western nations and the Islamic world.
President Obama has initiated summit-level talks by the UN Security Council on the subject of nuclear weapons reductions, leading to a binding resolution expressing a commitment to a nuclear-free world. And he has backed up this commitment by listening to the intense Russian criticism of the missile shield plans orchestrated by President Bush, redeploying the American presence in a way that is less threatening to Russian interests, and by expressing a desire to enter dialogue with North Korea and Iran regarding their nuclear programs. He has, finally, taken significant steps in the involvement of the United States in human rights through "experimental" membership in the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Looking back to the history of the Nobel Peace Prize, it seems likely that President Obama's selection will come to be viewed as sharing characteristics with many of the previous American laureates. Martin Luther King Jr. was a young, passionate, and charismatic orator whose words drew the attention of the nation and the world, moving forward an already mounting effort to bring about genuine racial equality. Obama, too, has made moving speeches and great strides toward demonstrating the equality of races and the capacity of Americans to recognize injustice at home and in the world. Ralph Bunche, the Harvard educated professor and diplomat, whose tireless efforts brought about a significant agreement in the Mid-East conflict, demonstrated intellectual nuance and faith in the ability of conflicting peoples to resolve their differences. Obama, too, brings a sophisticated mind to bear on seemingly intractable problems, showing resolve in the face of criticism and determination that good people can produce good in the world. Henry Kissinger was the architect of policies in Vietnam and Latin America that extended the geopolitical influence of the United States in an often shadowy battle to curtail the influence of the Soviet Union, but he was honored in 1973 for his conclusion of the Paris agreement to bring about an end of American involvement in Vietnam. Obama too will carry forward a legacy of conflicts in far-flung regions of the world, embarked upon to extend U.S. influence against a vague yet dangerous threat, but his expressed commitment has been to use force judiciously in only such places as it can lead to protection of peace and democracy. Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jimmy Carter, the three prior President-Laureates, were all involved in their own military pursuits, but each made strides toward securing peace for humanity, Roosevelt through the end of the Russo-Japanese war, Wilson through the creation of the League of Nations, and Carter through his participation in numerous negotiations in North Korea, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas. Given time and continued persistence, Obama's acheivements may come to encompass similar accomplishments.
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