Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

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9 October 2009 :: J.E. Robertson

Pres. Barack Obama, in office just under 9 months, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The award announcement has sent a ripple through world opinion, as critics and supporters clash over whether the award is premature, or whether Obama’s collaborative diplomatic method has achieved important gains for world peace. The prize could signal an endorsement of Obama’s work on comprehensive nuclear disarmament or on achieving climate consensus this fall, which is not only a correction of American intransigence on carbon limits, but also instrumental to preventing mass migration and resource wars.

The award also affirms the gains made in international cooperation, the key element of consideration for the prize. Nobel’s own criteria for the Peace prize state that it should go to the individual who has done the most to promote “fraternity among nations”. Woodrow Wilson was the last sitting US president to win the prize.

The Nobel committee cited Pres. Obama’s efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons and achieve the complex cooperation needed to formulate a global response to climate destabilization, adding that “now is the time for all of us to take responsibility for global solutions to global problems”. The point is not minor: the international system must consistently balance the principle of sovereignty with issues of human rights and sustainable cooperation.

Yet there remains a general tendency to view all international politics through a cynical lens of unsalvable difference and definitive atomization. Predictably, there has been a stolid and unthinking response from pundits of all stripes. The toxic reasoning that says you must be mired in conflict for years, partly responsible for thousands of deaths, and then blessed with an opportunity for specific peace before you can be eligible for recognition as having promoted fraternity among nations, has even affected the judgement of such talented reporters as Nicholas Kristof, at the New York Times.

I deeply respect Mr. Kristof’s long experience and consistently excellent reporting, but he’s wrong about Obama’s achievements in fostering a new climate in international relations. His opinion piece responding to the Nobel award is a very facile analysis and smacks of the critic who’s trying to be hard on the star of the moment in order not to be taken as less of a worthy critic. Here’s why: There’s a dangerous and irresponsible rumor that’s emerging, spread very deliberately by Republican leadership, that in fact “Obama hasn’t done anything”, despite his being one of the busiest presidencies to date, full of hard work, bold initiatives and major achievements.

Do we forget his first days in office? He had to overturn one after another radically dangerous Bush-era policy. For instance:

On his second day in office, he banned torture and called for a review of all cases of terror suspects, to craft the proper means of bringing them to justice within the Constitutional system of government that by law the United States adheres to. He ordered the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, where prisoners were held without legal counsel, without the hearing of evidence and without charge, indefinitely, and the closing of CIA ‘black site’ prisons around the world.

On his fifth day in office Obama held a major energy innovation and fuel efficiency meeting, at which he pledged to raise the CAFE standards for fuel efficiency and devote record amounts of federal funding to the development of renewable energy sources. He warned that America’s devotion to huge spending on oil “bankrolls dictators, pays for nuclear proliferation and funds both sides in our struggle against terrorism”. He ordered a review of the EPA’s role in regulating carbon emissions, a move that would eventually lead to the EPA officially adopting the policy ordered by a court ruling, that it had authority to cap carbon emissions.

We also noted that:

Perhaps most important, Obama moved by executive order, during his first days in office, to limit presidential powers by requiring that all high-level classification of documents involving presidential decisions be reviewed by a panel of legal experts, in order to prevent his own administration or future administrations from using the classification system to cover up potential wrongdoing.

But he didn’t wait to make it known that his intention was to create a multilateral framework for peace, wherever it might be useful. For instance:

On the morning of his first full day as chief executive of the United States government, Pres. Obama phoned four heads of state across the Middle East —Israel, Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Jordan— to discuss his feeling that there is an urgent need to start a practical and viable process of sustainable peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”

His work on nuclear disarmament is “important” not because it’s about non-proliferation, but because it’s about disarmament. Total, 100%, global nuclear disarmament. And he now has the unanimous support of the world’s major nuclear powers, the 5 permanent members of the Security Council, to move toward that goal.

UN SC Res. 1887 is one of the most important documents ever produced by the UN system, in that it lays the groundwork for a world free of nuclear weapons, however long it may take to achieve that goal. In the entire history of the nuclear arms race, no one has achieved that level of consensus on disarmament. This was done by aggressive, forthright and successful diplomacy, in the span of just 8 months’ worth of work. That is a major accomplishment.

On the question of peace and diplomacy, Barack Obama managed to deal with two “hostage” situations, with enemy “rogue states”, Roxana Saberi in Iran and Euna Lee and Laura Ling in North Korea, without escalating tensions in either region, without making threats or being weak; in each case, the art of diplomacy was practiced in such a way that it would lead to both success and non-escalation.

On Iran, the nuclear program is worrying, but for the first time in 30 years, the US has actually met with Iranian diplomats to discuss these issues directly, and the result is that Iran is in theory, agreeing to allow inspectors in, and even to ship uranium out of the country for processing. If this happens, the bomb will not be obtained by Iran.

Again: ambitious, successful nuclear diplomacy, enhanced credibility, peace before war, multilateralism, and just 8 months in office. I think the prize is not premature, because there are in fact real effects to all of this. There is a new climate favoring international cooperation to reduce or eliminate the world’s worst weapons, to raise awareness about and fight against brutalization and repression of women, and to achieve consensus on the most favorable ways to deal with climate-destabilizing emissions.

In the face of such progress, the complaints of critics who say Obama has not yet solved major problems dim. The Nobel Peace Prize has gone to leaders from the Middle East, but there has never really been peace. Was that premature, or was the award given to laud the actions and the methods of the laureates when they turned their attentions toward promoting peace?

There was praise from both Israeli and Palestinian leaders today, suggesting both sides want to have the president’s ear as plans to restart peace negotiations move forward and perhaps signaling one of the key reasons for giving the prize in the first place. The Nobel committee clearly wants Pres. Obama’s “new era of engagement” to gain momentum and to achieve the ideals so many champions of peace have sought for so long.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Obama and congratulated him on the award, writing in an open letter to the US president: “You have given inspiration to people all over the world”, adding that the Nobel award was “an expression of the hope that your presidency will promote a new era of peace”.

Netanyahu also looked ahead “to working closely with you in the years ahead to advance peace and to give hope to the peoples of our region who deserve to live in peace, security and dignity”. Israel’s president Shimon Peres, who won the Nobel Peace Prize himself, congratulated Obama with praise still more lavish than Netanyahu’s, writing:

Very few leaders if at all were able to change the mood of the entire world in such a short while with such profound impact. You provided all of humanity with fresh hope, with intellectual determination, and a feeling that there is a Lord in heaven and believers on earth…

Under your leadership, peace became a real and original agenda. And from Jerusalem, I am sure all the bells of engagement and understanding will ring again. You gave us a license to dream and act in a noble direction.

Pres. Obama himself he has not yet earned the Nobel Peace Prize, that the award is humbling and took him by surprise. He said he would accept the prize as a “call to action”, and that he understood the responsibility implied by such praise for his vision of a “world without nuclear weapons”, one of the key components of his foreign policy that moved the Nobel committee to a unanimous vote that he should be the award’s recipient for 2009.

A number of Republican politicians were openly disparaging, expressing views similar to those of Iranian leaders, the Taliban, and the Hamas leadership in Gaza, who said they are skeptical of Obama’s ability to foster a climate of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, or to end long-running conflicts, and suggesting that Obama has not in fact achieved much diplomatically.

But Republican candidate for the Virginia governorship, Bob McDonnell, says he is “delighted to see the President of the United States bring honor to our country by receiving the Nobel Peace Prize”. McDonnell is either worried about what it will take to win in a state that favored Obama or is a more level-headed, civic-minded politician, able to see the virtues in such an award, not just in terms of benefit to Pres. Obama, but to the nation and to the prospects for international peace and cooperation.

What Pres. Obama has done in terms of fostering international cooperation and peace, in just 8 months, far outweighs anything that was done in the last 8 years —when radical rhetoric, threats and intransigence, were hallmarks of national foreign policy—, and we all know that. The award is intended to acknowledge outstanding efforts to spur fraternity among nations, reduce or eliminate standing armies and achieve peace through open talks.

It’s time to take a cue from the Nobel committee and give credit where credit is due. We need more of this persistent, aggressive, collaborative diplomacy, aimed at restoring dignity to those mired in the world’s forgotten crises and promoting democracy and cooperation in concrete ways. The security of the United States depends on it, the stability of nations requires it, and any consideration for the wellbeing of future generations demands it.