Diaz Hendropriyono's Interview - Obama's Nobel Peace Prize
Obama’s Peace Prize as Bad News
October 11, 2009
Diaz Hendropriyono
Washington, DC
A few days ago, US President Barack Obama delivered a brief self-deprecatory remark in the Rose Garden of the White House after being awarded the Nobel Peace prize, an honor that often comes with a great celebration of the culmination of one’s achievement. Yet, the reward—elevating Obama’s position on the world stage as he joined other transformative figures including Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King Jr.—brought gasps of surprise and was not without a controversy.
The prize, which Obama plans to personally pick up in Oslo later in December and comes with $1.4 million windfall which the president plans to donate to charity, was perhaps announced prematurely to the novice president. Obama, the third sitting U.S. President to receive such recognition after Teddy Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919, has only been in office for nine months. Furthermore, the deadline for the select number of qualified people to submit nomination to the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee—in which at the time it received 205 names to consider—was February 1 of this year, on the very twelfth day of his presidency.
To compare, former President Jimmy Carter was given the Nobel twenty one years after stepping down from this highest post and former Vice President Al Gore received his just two years ago. Several former U.S. Secretary of State including Elihu Root, Frank Kellog, Cordell Hull, and George Marshall, were rewarded after they left office. And Presidents Roosevelt and Wilson were given the honor during their second terms.
The more important issue is that Obama has not delivered any concrete result. Charles Dawes, later became US Vice President, earned his Peace prize in mid 1920s for creating the WWI reparations plan. Foreign policy czar Henry Kissinger got his Nobel for establishing the Paris Peace Accords of 1973 to end the Vietnam Conflict. While Teddy Roosevelt had helped brought an end to the Japan-Russian war, Woodrow Wilson had founded the League of Nations, the precursor of the United Nations, before getting the reward.
Obama’s selection reportedly also came at the expense of at least two other nominees who have endured some suffering. It includes Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai—who had been beaten, harassed and arrested under President Robert Mugabe—and Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia, who is now in prison for the fifth time for challenging the Communist party.
Clearly, Obama does not need to get such a beating or spend time in jail before he can be awarded. Yet, Obama until this moment has not fulfilled many of his campaign promises. Attorney General Eric Holder recently acknowledged that the January 2010 deadline to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp—where suspected terrorists are placed for years, mostly without charge—is unlikely to be met. With only twenty detainees being moved out of the Bay since the beginning of Obama’s administration, and leaving 221 inmates to be relocated in three months; it is a tough call. In the Middle East, Obama’s promise of peace is for certain not coming anytime soon after failing to stop Israel from continuing settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, while the Palestinians insist that the latter should be made as its capital, wanting to return to the 1967 borders. Iran, which Obama promised to negotiate “without any precondition”, continues its uranium enrichment in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.
Fortunately, relation with Russia has softened as Obama dumped the Bush plan to construct missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, and so has relation with North Korea, as it has agreed to return to the six-party talks to discuss nuclear disarmament. However, peace is still not at hand in neither Iraq nor Afghanistan, perhaps the more problematic of the two. The prize would undoubtedly make it harder for the president to approve the additional troop increase—vital to maintain stability in the region—recently requested by the Commander of the US Forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal.
Regardless of what he has or has not done in this short time, it actually poses political risks to Obama’s presidency, as he now has a higher wall to climb and more things to prove. Also, the selection of Obama has brought a mixed reaction about the validity of the Nobel Committee’s decision. The Committee acknowledged that Obama was not chosen for substantive accomplishments, but for inspiring hope, as it added, “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, Alfred Nobel himself wrote in 1895 that the peace prize must be given “to the person who shall have done [emphasis added] the most or the best work for fraternity between nations… and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.”
Simply put, the prize is actually bad news for both Obama, as he is now faced with more pressure to fulfill his pledges, and the Nobel Committee, as it now faces criticisms regarding the selection and its processes. Most unfortunate, the prize has come too soon.
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