American presidents and politicians have consistently been recipients of the award: Theodor Roosevelt received the award in 1906 for his role in securing a peace deal between Russia and Japan. Woodrow Wilson was honored with the prize in 1919 for his work on the creation of the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations. Martin Luther King was presented with the award in 1964 for his commitment to civil rights for African Americans. The former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was even controversially given the nod in 1973 for his role in negotiating an end to the Vietnam War.
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Who has accepted Obama’s outstretched hand today? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? The Taliban? North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il? Russia’s Vladimir Putin or Dmitry Medvedev? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas? None of them. Nowhere is there any success in sight.
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It would not have hurt the Nobel Prize Committee, therefore, if they had decided to put Obama on the waiting list for the 2011 prize, and decided to give the 2009 award to an Iranian blogger or a Chinese dissident instead. Barack Obama would surely not have complained about such a decision.
President Obama responded to the news of his Nobel Peace Prize the right way. He said he was humbled, acknowledged that the efforts for which he was honored are only beginning and pledged to see them through, not on his own but in concert with other nations.
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The prize is a (barely) implicit condemnation of Mr. Bush’s presidency. But countering the ill will Mr. Bush created around the world is one of Mr. Obama’s great achievements in less than nine months in office. Mr. Obama’s willingness to respect and work with other nations is another.
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Americans elected Mr. Obama because they wanted him to restore American values and leadership — and because they believed he could. The Nobel Prize, and the broad endorsement that followed, shows how many people around the world want the same thing.
Mr Obama’s main achievement is a change of tone in foreign policy. A speech given in Egypt in June was an eloquent call for a new understanding between America and Islam. It was designed both to assure Muslims, now thought to number 1.6 billion around the world, that America is not set on a crusade. Similarly it was intended to convey to any Americans (and others) who believe in the notion of a “clash of civilisations” that friendly ties between religions is eminently possible.
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The prize-giving committee was at pains to emphasise Mr Obama’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples”. In the citation, the committee argued that his “diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.” But is the award premature? Although the prize may be given in the spirit of encouraging Mr Obama’s government, it might have been better to wait for more solid achievements. With so many good intentions, and so many initiatives scattered around the world (and an immensely busy domestic agenda, including health-care reform and averting economic collapse), Mr Obama appears to be racing around trying everything without yet achieving much.
Even if the nomination was ludicrously premature, it remains conceivable that something that has happened during the best part of the year that has subsequently passed would justify the Nobel committee’s decision. Certainly, Mr Obama has shown himself to have pacific yearnings, emphasising jaw-jaw over war-war in all his speeches, bravely promoting nuclear disarmament and taking decisions – as over European missile defence – which tend to cool diplomatic relations. But if the Obama effect is making itself felt in ambassadorial armchairs across the world, it is conspicuous by its absence in chief theatres of real conflict – or at least it is thus far.
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The reality is that the award is less a recognition of Mr Obama’s achievements than a mark of thanks from the world for his not being George W Bush. Encouragingly, the president acknowledged this oddity yesterday when he said would accept the prize in the spirit of “a call to action”. From the squalid streets of Gaza city to the blood-soaked fields of southern Afghanistan, it is a call the world needs him to heed.
It’s as if the Nobel Committee gave Obama the award for behaving like a normal American president, instead of like a clueless corrupt cowboy.
The Committee insists this is not an aspirational prize, no carrot to make the United States and its president better neighbors. Thobjorn Jagland, the former prime minister of Norway who chaired this year’s committee, insists that it’s for work the president has already accomplished, for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
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Obama got a nice vote of confidence from the Norwegians for his promises. But now, he has to actually earn the Nobel with his deeds. That will be hard to do if his administration continues to send such mixed signals on international cooperation and diplomacy.
Obama v manj kot letu dni, kar je na oblasti, ni storil nič takega, zaradi česar bi si zaslužil nagrado. Še dobro, da so mediji po svetu večinoma skeptični, ker je človek predstavljen že skoraj kot mesija.
Saj veste tisto:
Kakšna je razlika med Obamo in Jezusom? Jezus se ne pretvarja, da je Obama.