Obama's Peace Prize Victory: A Comment
By Michaela Davidova
On 09 October, the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Thorbjørn Jagland, announced the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Winner. While many expected the utterance of a name of political dissent from a non-democratic country - there are countless in Burma, North Korea, Iran (etc) -, or of an outstanding personality committed to fighting for human rights, few would have guessed that the winner would be (current) US President Barack Obama.
Reactions to the announcement were mainly of astonishment, and the international press headlines of 10 October revealed that nearly everyone who followed Jagland's proclamation shared similar quizzical wonder, asking ‘why Obama?' Despite amazement, few were overtly irritated by the decision; after all if Yasser Arafat could win the prize it was open to nearly anyone!
To, at least generally, understand Obama's rise from obscurity to claim the mantle of international peace efforts, it is necessary to travel back to 04 November 2008 when Obama defeated the Republican Party's presidential candidate, John McCain, and become the US's first African-American president. Part of the reason for Obama's tremendous victory is his charisma and his political capability that was able to mobilise a wide and varied support group. People, who had previously been uninterested in politics, took up volunteer work to contribute to Obama's political tidal wave, and going door to door to spread the idea that is reflected in Barack Obama to as wide an audience as possible. On Election Day, the US, together with the rest of the world, tensely watched the results of each state pour in and witnessed that the majority of American's believed that Obama represented and was best prepared to provide the "change" required of the US domestically and internationally.
Regardless of the inspiration Obama disseminated among the US public - and large parts of the world - officially, he only assumed presidential responsibilities following his ‘swearing in ceremony' on 20 January 2009, and by any account, the 10 months separating Obama's accession to his winning of the Nobel Peace Prize is not sufficient enough to determine how his presidency will shape up, especially in his drive towards reinforcing an international order based on denuclearisation, the defence of democratic values (including human rights protections), and generally helping to overcome a variety of international challenges. The mystery around his winning of the Nobel Prize then is compounded when considering that the deadline for the submission of nominations is 01 February each year. This fact begs the question of whether Obama was nominated for his 11 days in office, for his election campaign, or for some yet undefined reason. Officially, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Prize to Obama: "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" and, most important, for his "vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons."
Originally, Albert Nobel insisted that the Peace Prize should be awarded to someone who laboured for the abolition or reduction of standing armies. In that spirit, but after the nominations for the 2009 Prize was closed, Obama publicly uttered his vision of a nuclear weapons free world - during his speech in Hradcanske Square (Prague, April 5 2009). He vowed to reduce the US nuclear arsenal, and encouraged others to follow suit, making him the first US president to set this as a main foreign policy goal. Ironically, and something to give pause for reflection, his Prague speech was slighted by North Korea's test of long-range missiles, capable of carrying nuclear warheads. The world will not change in a single presidential term, rather change requires a long and patient process, and the Nobel Committee should have recognised this in their selection. Despite, debate over whether or not Obama deserves the ultimate Peace Prize, the fact remains that he has indeed embarked on an ambitious project, to make the world a safer place, and now it is important not to let the Nobel Committee down in its anticipatory selection lest the award become as useless as hollow rhetoric.
26 October 2009
