A Warning to Our Last Best Hope

The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded several times for a vague peace but never for a wager on the future. Until now.

Barack Obama is the first to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for hoping, along with the rest of humanity, for a more peaceful, just, cooperative and nuclear weapons-free world.

Several former laureates, like Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, got the award for peace treaties that were so fragile they might as well have been mere hopes. Others, like Woodrow Wilson who founded the League of Nations, were awarded it for a lifetime of achievement and a grand idea.

Barack Obama, just nine months in office, was given the award in expectation of achievement. The prize is a wager on his promise and on an uncertain future. And it comes right at a time when many are beginning to doubt he can keep his promise because precisely on that same day, Obama met with his security experts to try to develop a new strategy for Afghanistan. This much is clear: the war will continue and it will continue to claim many lives on both sides, because withdrawal is not an option as his advisors have been saying now for days.

Being awarded the prize is a heavy burden that drives expectations for the young president ever higher. Now the chorus of all those who for months have been asking when his words will be followed up be action will get even louder.

Obama was just as surprised at the announcement of the award as the rest of the world was. No one even suspected he was high on the list in Oslo. But he got the prize just at the right time. His push for change had run up against a stone wall in the United States just as it had in the rest of the world. Healthcare reform, designed to make health insurance affordable for millions of sufferers, seemed to have no traction. The planned closure of the Guantanamo prison camp presented enormous problems. Republicans and several Democrats opposed his program to reverse global warming. Obama’s representative will probably go to the Copenhagen environmental summit empty handed.

Cynics say Obama got the Nobel Prize for making peace with Hillary Clinton; for taking her into his Cabinet as Secretary of State after a bitter primary battle. Others grouse that he was given the award for making pretty, arousing and heart-warming speeches.

That’s not only unfair, it’s also wrong. People may disagree vehemently whether Obama deserves the prize after just nine months in office, but he has done considerably more than just talk. And the world shouldn’t underestimate the value of his words – they’ve inspired many and accomplished much, even if the successes are not yet fully apparent.

America is once again negotiating with the Russians on nuclear weapons reductions and now Iran has at least agreed to talks. His suggestions concerning new environmental regulations have sparked discussions across the country on energy conservation, electric automobiles, and renewable energy sources.

While it’s true the president has not yet succeeded in forging any signed peace treaties, he has at least changed to global tone and turned heads; perhaps he has even begun gradually turning policies around as well. That was evident at the U.N. meeting in New York as it was at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh.

And finally, the award was also an anti-Bush prize. It was praise for the re-activation of global dialogue, diplomacy and multilateralism. But it’s also a warning after so many years of devastation to avoid squandering this great opportunity. It’s not only a warning to Obama, but to the rest of the world as well.