THERE IS, in the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama, a potent, symbolic echo of that awarded in 1919 to the last US president in office to win it.
Woodrow Wilson had seen emerging out of the tragic bloodbath of the first World War a new moral imperative, the crying need for global, co-ordinated action against war, specifically the creation of an institutional forum through which the nations of the world could settle their differences, the League of Nations. Wilson won the award largely for his efforts to create the league though, ironically, he would lose the battle with Republicans back at home to prevail on the US to join it.
Fast forward. Today, it is precisely Mr Obama’s Wilsonian contribution to re-engaging the US with multilateral diplomacy, with its “emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play”, which is cited by the Norwegian Nobel Committee as the key rationale for its bold and welcome decision. “Obama has, as president, created a new climate in international politics,” the committee argues with much justification. Or in other words, though not stated, he has turned the page on what the committee, reflecting its European perspective, would have seen as the malign Bush years.
It also praised the importance of his “vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons” in kickstarting disarmament negotiations and his part in giving a new hope to the Copenhagen climate change talks process. Mr Obama’s important engagement with Islam in his Cairo speech will certainly also have played its part in the committee’s decision.
Premature? The award has created controversy worldwide. There have been some grudging responses to the announcement. Mr Obama, speaking at the UN General Assembly at his first appearance there last month, admitted his work is only beginning. “I have been in office for just nine months, though some days it seems a lot longer,” he told world leaders. Hold on, the critics say, he’s only just in office, his efforts to bring the parties together in the Middle East have borne little fruit and North Korea and Iran are showing little sign of giving up their nuclear ambitions. He is leading a country which is embroiled in what many see as two unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is definitely pot-half-empty territory.
Yet, in truth, although he may as yet have no treaties under his designer belt and most of the challenges he faces are still very much work in progress, Mr Obama’s achievements are substantive, and very real. American foreign policy has been set on a new course, multilateral diplomacy on issues like armaments has been given a new lease of life and the nature and language of international dialogue has been transformed. Like Al Gore’s, whose Nobel prize for campaigning on climate change preceded his by two years, Mr Obama’s award is about his creation of political possibilities and space, and the real power of ideas and personal example. The power, as Mr Obama himself would say, of hope.