Shock and Awe Obama wins peace Nobel

The Norwegian Nobel committee has awarded the peace prize to some controversial names in the past — Henry Kissinger is one —  but the decision to give it this year to US president Barack Obama must be the strangest yet. The committee said the prize was given for his diplomacy and specifically mentioned his call for a world free of nuclear weapons in a speech in April.

But after the announcement, the reaction from around the world was one of disbelief and skepticism, mainly asking one key question — why now? The prize has usually gone to someone for consistent achievement over the years but this time round it seems more for what he intends to do rather than what he has done. He must have been recommended within two weeks of his taking office since the last date for nominations was February 1.

“It’s like giving a young director an Oscar in the hope he will make good films one day,” wrote an irate blogger. “It makes a mockery of the Nobel peace prize,” wrote a commentator in the online edition of The Times of London. Several others interpreted the committee’s decision as a snub to George W Bush.

The committee, perhaps anticipating such reactions, praised Obama for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” during his nine months in office. “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.”

Even so, the award, just nine months into the Obama presidency, is a surprising decision. The US is engaged in two wars and while Obama has involved himself in many critical foreign policy initiatives, such as Middle East peace, curbing North Korea’s growing intransigence and slowing down Iran’s nuclear programme, he has no success to show.

On the contrary, North Korea has fired a weapon over Japan and Iran is pressing ahead with its plans. As his home approval ratings have fallen, even his strong supporters have been critical of him. Writer Gore Vidal recently called him “incompetent”. The timing of the award is therefore even more ironical.

As congratulations poured in from different parts of the world with former winner (1984) Archbishop Desmond Tutu calling it a “very imaginative and somewhat surprising choice” the feeling remained that the award had come too soon. “Who, Obama? So fast? Too fast — he hasn’t had the time to do anything yet,” exclaimed Lech Walesa, the winner in 1983, when he was informed of this decision.

The committee was rewarding Obama’s audacity of hope rather than any substantive achievements, was a widespread reaction.

The online world exploded with comments as the news spread, with all the social  networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, as well as the blogosphere, full of reactions from users everywhere. “Never seen Twitter so united in sarcasm as over the Nobel announcement,” said a report on the online site of Time magazine, while a right wing website pointedly remarked, “Nobel peace prizes gone wild!”

It’s not that he did not have his supporters. Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency — who was awarded the prize in 2005 — said: “I cannot think of anyone today more deserving of this honour. In less than a year in office, he has transformed the way we look at ourselves and the world we live in and rekindled hope for a world at peace with itself.” In the Middle East, the award was viewed positively because Obama has been perceived as tougher on Israel than his predecessors. “We hope that he will be able to achieve peace in the Middle East and achieve Israeli withdrawal to 1967 borders and establish an independent Palestinian state on 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital,” chief Palestinian negotiators Saab Erekat said.

But there is little doubt that this recognition will put additional pressure on Obama to tackle a myriad range of global issues such as climate change, terrorism, Middle East peace and the economic downturn, while Americans will want him to now concentrate on domestic affairs and save jobs as well as bring back soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan.