Costs of War: Peace Prize Politics

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama astounded critics and supporters alike, but it also highlights a gap between the way the world sees the US and the way Americans think about their own homeland, Shaun Waterman (KC 1984, Social and Political Sciences) writes for ISN Security Watch.

From the domino theorists of the Cold War through the liberal interventionism of the Clinton administration and on to the neo-conservative determination that freedom could be spread by US firepower, American foreign policy thinkers have often sought to make peace by waging war.

In some important ways, this is also true of US President Barack Obama. After all, the day the Nobel Peace Prize was announced, the president spent much of the afternoon closeted with national security advisors, wrestling with the question of whether to commit an additional 40,000 US combat troops to Afghanistan.

So it should perhaps be no surprise that the Nobel Committee’s decision is such a mixed blessing for Obama, despite the extraordinary vote of confidence in his leadership it represents.

“Only very rarely,” wrote the committee, “has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future.” The committee said his diplomacy was “founded on 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.”

Many US commentators interpreted the award as a “down payment” on peace agreements yet to be reached. The president himself depicted it as part of a tradition of using the prize “to give momentum to a set of causes.”

And, on one reading, the Committee’s citation does portray it that way. After all, it lists the achievements it is rewarding as the president’s return to the principles of multilateralism, his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, and his leadership on the issue of global warming - hardly a set of concrete, fully realized successes.

The president’s progressive supporters say the prize is a measure of the way Obama has “restored America’s moral standing” in the world, pointing out it was welcomed by former winners as diverse as Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tutu and Shimon Peres.

• Read the whole article on ISN Security Watch