The Nobel Peace Prize and Barack Obama

http://www.nst.com.my

October 14, 2009

Peace Prize a self-fulfilling prophecy?

by W.Scott Thompson*

When the news of Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize came through, I was trying to decide…

Well, what can we say? When you think about it, is there anyone more deserving? Obama himself said he wondered how he could be in the company of such transformative leaders, but that is self-answering, because he already has transformed not just America’s ability to foster peace in the world, but the whole international climate of cooperative endeavour.

Two sitting American presidents have won it before — Theodore Roosevelt for bringing about the 1905 settlement of the Russo-Japanese war, and Woodrow Wilson, in 1919, for his campaign for the League of Nations.

Neither of these awards was in the Obama league, though. Roosevelt brokered a useful truce but he just enjoyed a bit too much “walking softly and carrying the big stick”, with emphasis on the latter. Wilson campaigned hard for the League as a panacea of war, but his rigidity in his American campaign, refusing to yield on his 14 points, ensured that his own country wouldn’t ratify it, thus dooming its effectiveness. It was a reward for a noble effort.

Now we learn how controversial the award already is in Obama’s backyard. It no doubt will harm him in the short run. It looks like an award for good intentions to which he can’t possibly live up. The right wing is having a field day. The worst American diplomat of recent decades, John Bolton, saw it entirely in partisan terms — the award having gone to Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and now a third Democrat all in a decade. “Got the message, America?” he mocked the Norwegian committee.

Well, John, are there any Republicans around who might even be considered? It just had nothing whatever to do with party. Let the Republicans stew in their soup of national aggrandisement, while Barack Obama walks with heroes. If to some the award is Europe’s answer to George W. Bush, so be it.

To me, the award seems to be two things. One, Obama already has had a transformative effect. It took more than personal ambition for a junior senator and an African-American to drive to the presidency. It took vision. The guts he showed in raising the discourse of American politics, never once yielding to the partisan (and often racist) bait around him, is still memorable — with a great message to the world about what one man or woman can achieve.

Have we already forgotten what the world looked like a year ago, with the stock market crashing and a sandbox president as usual closing his eyes to the ruin around him that he had facilitated, if not caused? There have been many important transitions in American politics; but the one this year stands at least with Franklin Roosevelt’s seizing the reins from Herbert Hoover as the most significant in our history.

There’s a second thought that surely was in the Norwegian committee’s mind. Obama walks tall, and expectations throughout the world must weigh heavily on his shoulders. But he was still just the American president. The Nobel committee has now elevated him — whether or not prematurely — to world statesman. They surely saw their decision as a self-fulfilling prophecy, one that would add to the huge forward wave of good influence.

In the morrow of the announcement Obama has the awesome responsibility of deciding on a course for the allies in Afghanistan. How well my generation recalls the decisions, so deeply flawed, of American presidents 30 and 40 years ago for Vietnam, leading to outright catastrophe (not to mention Iraq in 2003). My edited book Lessons of Vietnam was already at the publishers when the evacuation from Saigon took place.

The prime lesson was that our leaders didn’t have a clue about the reality in Vietnam that they were trying to influence. They refused to learn lessons from the similar French debacle of a generation earlier, and they always sought to reinforce the weaknesses in their strategy (and Bush just repeated the British mistakes of the 1920s). Obama is tutoring himself, with a sense of history, on just precisely what the Afghan situation is.

I think the decoration now weighing down Obama’s shoulders will give him the necessary sense of destiny in the decisions to be made. We in the outer ring of the White House used to joke about how American presidents talked of the awesome responsibility they had as leaders of the free world — while demonstrably enjoying the even more awesome perks of the office. The Nobel Peace Prize has put all that behind Obama, if there was any risk of it to begin with.

Maybe there is a last objection. Obama hasn’t done anything yet as president. OK, grant it. If this is the first time the Nobel was awarded to someone just for being who he is, then stand by it. Can anyone point to me anything more extraordinary in the history of democracy than that this quite young man, with roots in Africa and Southeast Asia, was elected to be the most powerful person in the world, just because of who he was, is and shall be?

God bless the Norwegian committee for reminding us what is at stake.

*W. Scott Thompson, a member of both Ford and Reagan Administrations, has been Adjunct Professor of International Politics at Georgetown University and on the faculty of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.  He also is president of Strategic Research Associates, an international consulting firm, dealing today with issues of corruption, and Chairman of the Board of UTICo, a Massachusetts company specializing in repatriation of laundered and stolen funds to clients, including banks, investors, corporations, and governments.

A graduate of Stanford and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar from California, Prof. Thompson has regularly lectured on defense, Third World, corruption and communication issues, before various forums including international conferences.  He is the author and editor of numerous books and articles on foreign policy and governance.