Imagine this post only had nine words. How could you judge it effectively? After all, it has barely started. You might think it was a really promising start, because you’ve read my posts before and you think they are good. But I’m human enough to admit that not everything I write “works”. If this post were judged to be the best post of 2009 on just nine words, you’d feel that this was a little silly – even if you thought it had potential to be a great post.
I felt that kind of incredulity upon hearing that Obama had won the Nobel Peace prize for 2009. He has only been in office for nine months.
Alfred Nobel’s will said that the Peace Prize should be given “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.” (emphasis added) As this Slate piece comments, it’s the “shall have done” which is the kicker. Shall have done makes it sound like…well, the person should have actually achieved something.
The Peace Prize committee released a statement justifying its choice:
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.
Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.
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. 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.
For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world’s leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama’s appeal that “Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.”
Really, as the Slate article concludes, Obama has been given this award for his image as much as anything else:
The award has essentially been given for the president’s speechmaking ability, which means his political handlers made the right call by sending him to Berlin during last year’s election. The prize highlights the juxtaposition between the 44th and 43rd presidents: from a verbally challenged leader who seemed at time to revel in shunning world opinion to a wordsmith who came to office promising to embrace the globe.
In essence, Obama has been awarded the prize for not being George W. Bush. Still, as much as one might admire Obama’s speeches, the speeches are just so much hot air unless someone responds to them, or something changes.
I’m not saying that speeches are unimportant. Sometimes a speech can be pivotal. But it has to actually provoke a practical change, and it’s really hard to ascertain whether there has been a practical change with any of Obama’s speeches. He hasn’t actually stopped any wars (the war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan). He hasn’t managed to broker a Middle Eastern peace accord or anything like that.
The award just seems premature – like judging this blog post nine words in.
Update:
Mark at LP has also concluded that Obama got the award for not being GWB. And he links to this very interesting piece by Glenn Greenwald at Salon. Greenwald says:
All that said, these changes are completely preliminary, which is to be expected given that he’s only been in office nine months. For that reason, while Obama’s popularity has surged in Western Europe, the changes in the Muslim world in terms of how the U.S. is perceived have been small to nonexistent. As Der Spiegel put it in the wake of a worldwide survey in July: “while Europe’s ardor for Obama appears fervent, he has actually made little progress in the regions where the US faces its biggest foreign policy problems.” People who live in regions that have long been devastated by American weaponry don’t have the luxury of being dazzled by pretty words and speeches. They apparently — and rationally — won’t believe that America will actually change from a war-making nation into a peace-making one until there are tangible signs that this is happening. It’s because that has so plainly not yet occurred that the Nobel Committee has made a mockery out of their own award.
23 Comments
Who’d want to be a member of a club that has Henry Kissinger as a member. The Peace prize is a debased currency already.
I suppose KRudd and W(r)ong will get some equally prestigious environmental award.
Next years Physics prize goes to someone who popularizes the idea (but doesn’t deliver) Star Trek transporters based on telepathy.
And ten million monkeys with typewriters get the Booker based on the hypothetical chance they’ll produce something readable.
Short of coughing up the gong “because he’s worth it”, the only announcement of any significance in the nomination timeframe that I can think of is closure of Guantanamo. If, as it sounded at the time, this had actually meant the end of US torture and kidnapping and recommitment to international law it might (might) have gone some way to justifying his consideration for the award. Unfortunately we’ve since learned that it simply means the same operations will continue elsewhere (including Bagram) – Glenn Greenwald at Salon writes compellingly about the issue regularly and I’ve got a lot of time for him.
Hands up anyone who thinks Obama has achieved ANYTHING in relation to nuclear weapons. Anyone?
Am afraid the Norwegian committee have made fools of themselves with this.
DEM – I doofus-ishly left out a link to Greenwald’s latest piece in Salon – now inserted – you might like to read it.
I’m guessing part of the problem with the Peace Prize is that sometimes, the best people to stop a fight are those who started it – but how can they be said to be peaceful if they have perpetrated terrible acts before? Kevin’s example of Kissinger is apposite. I’m also thinking of uproar over the award to Arafat, Rabin and Peres a few years ago.
With Obama, though, there isn’t even anything like that. Sure, he inherited wars and problems, and hasn’t made any himself yet, but I don’t see any sign that he’s fixed any wars or disputes yet.
Indeed, he must have been nominated just days after he became President, which is ridiculous. If I were him, I’d think about knocking it back – it’s a bit of an embarrassment.
Yes – nominations apparently closed 11 days after he became President. He may deserve it in four years (hope springs eternal) but now?
Oh that’s a very nice starter gag LE, chortle chortle…
(For readers who came via LP, click on the eagle at the top of the blog and you’ll see what I mean).
I love that joke SL. I’m just reading what might be the ultimate reflexive PhD thesis in which the writer continually critiques the standard thesis form as he writes. The abstract ends in midsentence, at exactly 300 words.
Things are looking up! Previous year’s prizes have gone to active members of terrorist organisations, like Yasser Arafat. Giving this prize to a guy who hasn’t actually done anything much represents a significant positive movement away from prizes given in previous years.
One of these days they might actually give it to someone who deserves it…
Glad that people got the joke. I was a little worried when a family member starting reading it and said, ‘How come there’s only a few words here at the start? I think there’s some kind of mistake.’
I like the sound of that PhD thesis, M-H. But I wouldn’t dare do it with my own!
Where’s my freaking prize? I haven’t had a blog stoush for around 11 days now, which is exactly the same time “The O” was prez when the votes were tallied.
If he got a peace prize for that I deserve one too for staying out of blog stoushes.
jc hahahahahaha! Well done you.
Yes, I concur.
Considering that Al Gore won it last year and that Obama’s not even served one year and has yet to demonstrate anything apoproaching a solid geopolitical achievement – it’s pure hype.
The Nobel Committee is obviously pushing a barrow. I might want it pushed but what’s the point of such a thing as the Peace Prize if it’s simply an extension of the public relations apparatus?
But that’s not so surprising. Any peace prize awarded to Kissinger or Arafat’s gotta be a joke right?
That’s my last comment here for this year. Please don’t think I’ve deserted you. This is really the highest quality blog I’m currently aware of and I’ll return in January. I just need a break from politics. I’m doing art and find the two incompatible for some strange reason.
So long ’til later.
Dang, Adrien, you’ll be missed.
Absolutely spot on. No further comment is necessary.
David
Best description I’ve come across was second hand. I can’t find the right page now but in the UK The Times mentioned that a US paper described it as (paraphrasing here) like awarding the Best Picture Oscar to someone who looked like they might make a really good movie sometime fairly soon. Hmm, now I think about it it’s really more like giving it to someone who’s just talked about making a really good movie sometimes soon and has an idea of some of the things that need to be in it, but is still in the process of working out the storyline – anything resembling a finished script, let alone a shooting schedule, is still a long way off. To continue with the movie analogy, world peace has been in development hell for long enough that you have to wonder why they still bother to award it. I thought perhaps the terms of Nobel’s will having looked it up to blog on this myself, but since then I’ve found that on a number of occasions they’ve not awarded it at all. I’m guessing that at least once, probably more, that would have been because none of the nominees really lived up to it. If Obama was really the best out of the 205 names in the hat, and not knowing most of the rest he might have been (though I do know that all of them are also not George W Bush, so perhaps they should share it
), I really think they should have sat on it this year. If nothing else what if in a few years Obama leaves office having brokered a permanent peace in the Middle East, sorted out the problems in Afghanistan and Iraq, reached a lasting understanding with Iran and North Korea, and reduced the world’s nukes by 75%? It’d be great if even half that happens and the guy would deserve all the praise and recognition the world could offer, but having already awarded him a Nobel Peace Prize for little more than rocking up to the White House and changing the curtains the Norwegian Nobel Committee have left themselves nowhere to go. It makes the whole thing look like a joke, possibly at Bill Clinton’s expense given his lack of a Nobel despite what he helped achieve in Ulster and came close to doing in Israel/Palestine. Ah screw it, let’s nominate Barack Obama again for next year, and the year after, and the year after…..
Adrien, that’s too bad, but I understand – sometimes I think about taking a break too. We’ll miss you, but.
Well at least Henry Kissinger gave his money quietly to charity. As a result of that particular award, the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize was set up, known as the Right Livelihood Award. It goes to relatively unknown grass roots activists around the planet which I reckon is far more appropriate than giving it to US Presidents and other politicians. Pity it doesn’t get the same publicity.
Peter Jones, I didn’t know that. I have more respect for Kissinger as a result.
The more I think about it, the more I think Obama should have turned it down, both for his own sake, and for the sake of the award.
That’s odd – I’ve not had that problem. {scratches head}
Oh well, come back soon.
Good luck, Adrien.
It’s a weird problem, but I have it too, with practising law and any feeble attempts at the creative arts.
SL, I’m not that bold either, but I’m reading it in awe of his nerve. For the introduction he starts by quoting his Uni’s regulations about what an introduction should contain (this was over 20 years ago!), then basically tells the examiners that it’s their job to decide that what he’s going to do fulfills that regulation. It’s hilarious, and the examiners must have really enjoyed their task. It’s a book called _The Reflexive Thesis_ by Malcolm Ahsmore.
Yeah, catch you next time Adrien.
Although on the difficulty of mixing art and politics? Didn’t seem to bother Goya, Hogarth, or Picasso painting Guernica!
If talking about peace and not doing anything about it is criteria for the award, maybe next year we will see Osama bin Laden as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. He has also made some great speeches and largely sat around doing nothing.
http://www.zippy.com.au/if-obama-deserved-a-nobel-prize-then-so-does-osama-part-2/2009/10/