Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize: For what?

Incredulity was my response to President Barack Obama’s recent award of the Nobel Peace Prize on 9 October 2009. I know that what I am going to write and the questions I pose may cause levels of disgruntlement among some of my Obamaist friends who have nothing but unswerving (yet uncritical) loyalty towards Obama. However, the issue is that we must sober up to the reality of the kind of politics and interests Obama and his administration stand for and rid ourselves of the euphoria of his election, despite its important historic and symbolic dimensions. We need to ask why did the Nobel committee decide on the basis of 205 candidates to award the peace prize to Obama, who is only nine months into his presidency? Was it not premature to have awarded him this prize? And on what basis was it awarded?

According to the Nobel committee of five people who made the decision, President Obama was selected ‘for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples’. The chair of the committee said they appreciated the ‘special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons’. Furthermore, the committee declared: ‘Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.’

However, the reality is that Obama has yet to deliver on any of the major foreign policy initiatives upon which he has embarked. For example, his push for peace in the Middle East has been threatened by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claims that the Israelis will continue to build more Jewish homes on Arab lands, claims that are likely to stall the efforts towards any peaceful settlement. In short, there has been no significant change in the Middle East – Israel can do what it wants with the slightest, if any, rebuke from Washington. On climate change, Obama has yet to convince Congress to pass legislation reducing carbon emissions. Ostensibly the prize was awarded to encourage Obama’s initiatives to reduce nuclear arms and to ease tensions with the Muslim world that were partially relaxed through his visit to Cairo in June this year. Obama has also abandoned America’s embrace of the gun-wielding diplomacy of George W. Bush for multilateral diplomacy and international cooperation. Essentially the committee awarded Obama for his promises to maintain world peace rather than for any concrete accomplishments. To put it differently, some think the award is a repudiation of Obama’s predecessor, a kind of ‘thank you for not being Mr Bush’.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, ‘It is an award that speaks to the promise of President Obama’s message of hope’, while Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary-general, described the award as an ‘unexpected, but inspired choice’. The Nobel committee proclaimed that Obama had ‘created a new climate in international politics’. It believes that the US under Obama’s leadership is pursuing a more constructive role in meeting ‘the great climatic challenges’ facing the planet. Certainly it can be argued that the award places more pressure on Obama to now live up to such ideals and hopes. Obama, like many people, was surprised by the award and showed humility in his response. He said, ‘I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many transformative figures that have been honoured by this prize.’ He said he would accept it as recognition of the struggles of others for peace – ‘as a call to action, a call to all nations, to confront the challenges of the 21st century’. He will donate the cash award of $1.4 million (£880,000) to charity.

Meanwhile, the stark fact is that the award comes as Obama contemplates pouring tens of thousands more troops into Afghanistan while his national security advisors insist on a shift of the conflict from Afghanistan to pursuing al-Qaida in Pakistan. Meanwhile, American troops are still in Iraq. Another reality is that Russia possesses 15,000 nuclear weapons, Israel holds between 100–200 and the US has 9,600. Can Obama really be working towards a world free of nuclear arms whilst possessing such a stockpile? Similarly, on what grounds can Obama or anyone deny Iran the right to a uranium enrichment facility or even the right to possess nuclear arms when the US owns such weapons? Surely a nuclear-free world means that all countries should rid themselves of all weapons of mass destruction? In short, why should anyone be given a peace prize whilst their country owns one of the largest nuclear arsenals on earth and has over 500 military bases scattered around the world? Moreover, how can the prize be reconciled with the fact that Obama pushed of one of the biggest defence budgets in US history through Congress? Can a peace prize-winner now go forward and deploy 20,000 more US troops in Afghanistan?

In 1895, Alfred Nobel stated in his will that the peace prize should be granted ‘to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses’. In justifying their decision, the Nobel committee said, ‘We trust that this award will strengthen [Obama’s] commitment, as the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, to continue promoting peace and the eradication of poverty.’

Let us have the ‘audacity of hope’ that the award will put enormous pressure on Obama to fulfil the expectations granted by the prize-givers and all those within America and across the globe who genuinely desire peace and an end to both covert and overt war. It is only in the future that history and historians will have better grounds to evaluate Obama’s performance based on his concrete accomplishments and performance, rather than solely soaring words.

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* Dr Ama Biney is a pan-Africanist and scholar–activist who lives in the United Kingdom.
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