Laureate Obama - Recognition of a changed America

THE decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama so extraordinarily early in his presidency — less than nine months after he took office — was as unexpected as it is unprecedented.

President Obama became the fourth American leader to be so honoured. He follows Theodore Roosevelt, who won in 1906 for his role in ending the 1905 war between Japan and Russia; Woodrow Wilson won in 1919 for engineering post-World War I treaties and Jimmy Carter was honoured in 2002 for “ untiring effort to find peaceful solutions ... to advance democracy and human rights”. These awards were based on achievement but President Obama’s is based on promise.

The award was made because of what he is not as much as for what he is. He is not George Bush, he is not Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld. He is unambiguous on water-boarding and he closed Guantanamo.

George Bush and his inner circle put American hegemony before everything and, despite a very public commitment to black-or-white Christianity, was prepared to do more than bend the rules to achieve it. So much of what they did was motivated by a post-9/11 insecurity and need for revenge that even America’s oldest and most indebted friends were made uncomfortable.

President Obama, it seems, sees no conflict between sustaining American hegemony and doing the right thing. He seems determined to build a new place in the world for America rather than create a world where there is no place for opponents of America.

President Obama has vowed to work towards a world without nuclear arms. He reached out to the Muslim world. He has shown he is not prepared, unlike so many American presidents, to overlook Israel’s indifference to the standards we expect from a civilised nation.

Recognising this in its citation the Nobel committee said: “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.”

These are the principles that made America great and sustained Europe through a savage, war-torn century. These are the principles that brought the Soviet Union’s totalitarianism to an end. These are the principles that ensured last week’s celebrations of 60 years of communism in China were held in a country very, very different to the one envisaged by its 1949 architects.

America is involved in two wars, both began long before Barack Obama had any influence. He has said that he wants to end both but admits that will take time. No matter how America’s and Obama’s critics might wish it otherwise that is the reality.

America’s banks were central to the world’s economic crisis and America’s policies on climate change have lost that country many friends but President Obama has recognised this is a way his predecessor did not and has promised to act accordingly.

So far President Obama’s greatest gift to the world has been a renewal of optimism, the feeling that “yes, we can” might be more than an electioneering sound bite.

In these worrying times that may be enough to justify this great honour. It is certainly an endorsement of a new consciousness in America that to be the most powerful is not enough anymore, you must be right as well.

The award is a recognition that the world’s foremost superpower seems, once again, determined to be a force for unity and achievement, a force for all that can be admirable and good about humanity.