An Explosive Decision

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize went to President Barack Obama. The decision was announced on Friday shortly after the U.N. Security Council decided to ramp up the war in Afghanistan. The 15 members of the exclusive U.N. club passed Resolution 1890 late Thursday, approving a troop surge in the Hindu Kush that will add to the 100,000 troops already there. All member nations were requested to respond by providing “personnel, weaponry and other resources.” Whether and to what extent the United States will increase its troop contingent and how its military strategy will look in the future is to be decided on Friday during a war council planned for the White House. The current commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has requested an additional 40,000 troops.

Some twelve hours after this general mobilization, the Nobel Committee in Oslo announced it was awarding its Peace Prize to Barack Obama for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between nations.” He was also selected because of his engagement in favor of a world free of nuclear weapons. The honoree in Washington reacted with “humility” to the unexpected honor.

Congratulations from America’s NATO partners in Afghanistan followed, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy saying he was certain the award would encourage the world to work together with Obama and America in order to achieve common goals. He closed his remarks with a solemn observation that the award is a symbol of “the return of America to the hearts of the peoples of the world.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that Obama’s “support for a nuclear weapons-free world was a goal we should all be striving to achieve.” The CDU politician thereby endorsed something she herself has yet to work toward. Guido Westerwelle, the FDP chief who has hopes of becoming Germany’s next foreign minister, called the award “moral support for a policy based on cooperation rather than confrontation, disarmament rather than rearmament.”

The German Federal Council for Peace, on the other hand, criticized the award as “a colossal mistake.” In the first place, Obama’s speeches in Prague and Cairo, in which he expressed his willingness to enter nuclear disarmament negotiations, were still only “sweet-sounding promises” made while the United States was engaged in modernizing its nuclear weapons arsenal and developing new “bunker buster” bombs. In addition, Obama had just submitted the largest defense budget in U.S. history to Congress and proposed a troop surge in Afghanistan that will expand, rather than end, hostilities there.

The award decision made by Europeans was also puzzling to those in the Hindu Kush. A Taliban spokesman said Obama hadn’t yet “taken a single step toward peace in the region.” Instead, he had escalated the war by increasing the number of U.S. troops serving there. Obama, some said, “had Afghan blood on his hands,” and wonder, “why give the award to someone for sending more soldiers to Afghanistan to bomb and kill innocent people?”