DEVALUING THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

• First of all, some history.  Obama is only the third sitting President to receive the Prize, the others being Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.  President Wilson received the Prize in December 1920 at the end of his presidency.  He had brought the US through the First World War, and negotiated the Treaty of Versailles, especially the section that called for the establishment of the League of Nations.  The Nobel Committee desired to honor this president who had given so much for world peace.  It was a tragic end for Wilson, for he was sick, having suffered a debilitating stroke while trying to get the Senate to ratify the Versailles Treaty.  Because of the isolationism of the US Senate, the Treaty was never ratified by the US.  Isolationists were fearful of this new international body called the League of Nations.  Because he was so sick he was not able to go to Kristiana (as Oslo was called then), to accept the award and deliver the expected address.  But the award was a boost to Wilson, who by this time was not only physically sick, but his approval ratings in the US were low and he was demoralized.  It was a generous act of grace on the part of the Nobel Committee.  In contrast to Wilson, Obama is receiving this award in the early months of his presidency; he has accomplished nothing and is being recognized for his goals, not his achievements.  The Committee declared, as it made the announcement, that “Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics.  Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role the United Nations and other international institutions can play.”  The Committee apparently believes that Obama’s pro-UN position deserves recognition.  Presumably, awarding President Obama the Prize is as much a jab at and criticism of former President Bush as anything else.  In doing so, the Committee is engaging in raw politics and that devalues the significance of the Prize.

• Second, former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw argues that President Obama should take with him to Oslo to receive the Prize a large delegation comprised of Americans who really deserve the Prize.  He suggests former president George H.W. Bush, who managed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany.  Or former President Bill Clinton and Richard Holbrooke, who both managed the Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the slaughter in Bosnia in the 1990s.  His point:  These people deserve the Prize.  They should be recognized by Obama when he receives his undeserved Prize.  Columnist Michael Gerson writes most perceptively that “Others, however, embraced the award in a more sophisticated manner—not as a tribute to Obama but as a symbol of America’s revived popularity in the world.  It is a good thing, the argument goes, for an American president to be loved by foreigners, even if their sloppy display of affection is embarrassing.”  Gerson goes on to argue that presidential popularity in the world is hardly a criterion for such an award.  Has it or will it translate into effective diplomacy?  We of course have no idea.  But Gerson contends that there are at least three criteria that should be used to evaluate national standing:  Credibility, reputation and personal popularity.  On all three criteria, one must be suspect about President Obama at this early point in his presidency.  His award was made not on the basis of his use of hard power (military prowess and/or the effective use of military power), or soft power (hard-headed diplomacy short of military action).  His award was based on “Star power” and that seems to only matter in Oslo. 

• Third, columnist Daniel Henninger offers a penetrating commentary on the symbolism of Oslo’s awarding this Prize to our president.  He sees this award as proof of the state of political decadence so pervasive in much of Western Europe.  This “Old Europe now lives in a world of unpayable public pension obligations, weak job creation for its youngest workers, below-replacement birth rates, fat agricultural subsidies for farms dating to the Middle Ages, high taxes to pay for the public high-life, and history’s most crucial proof of decay—the inability to finance one’s armies.  Only five of the 28 nations in NATO (the UK, France Turkey, Greece and Spain) achieve the minimum defense-spending benchmark of 2% of GDP.”  This Old Europe has embraced a “soft moralism” that refuses to come to terms with hard questions facing the West.  Such hard questions involve Pakistan, Afghanistan, Darfur, and where to hold captured terrorists.  Old Europe has been overcome by a soft, moralistic pacifism.  That is why Oslo awarded Obama this Prize.  They affirm his “vision of . . . a world without nuclear weapons” and “for meeting the great climactic challenges the world is confronting.”  As Henninger so thoughtfully suggests, “Obama’s worldview coincides with that of the continent that claims to have seen itself in him and its Peace Prize.”  But his Peace Prize has little to do with the hard decisions Obama needs to make about Afghanistan and the war on terror.  Or Iran’s clear determination to build nuclear weapons.  He must make his decisions based on the hard facts of reality, not the ephemeral dreams of soft moralism.  The latent pacifism of the old Europe will help little in facing the brutal facts of a hostile, terror-filled world.  The Nobel Prize that Obama will receive on 10 December is filled with the symbolism of a decadent civilization totally out of touch with reality.  It is for that reason that our President, if he accepts the award, which he apparently is going to do, must accept it as the representative of a people totally on a different path than that of pacifistic Europe.  The columnist Tom Friedman suggests that Obama accept the award as a president who “will never hesitate to call on American soldiers where necessary to take the field against the enemies of peace, tolerance and liberty—I accept this peace prize on behalf of the men and women of the US military: the world’s most important peace keeper.”  That kind of language would at least indicate clearly that the US is not the Old Europe.  The US still stands for something besides decadence.

See Tom Friedman in the New York Times (11 October 2009); Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal (15 October 2009); Michael Gerson in the Washington Post (14 October 2009); John Milton Cooper in the New York Times (11 October 2009); Tom Brokaw in the Washington Post (15 October 2009).

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