So, obviously the big news of the day was the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Barack Obama. I’ve spent the whole day thinking about it and I keep finding hard to make up my mind on it.
I think that we need to first try to understand what we mean by Peace. The basic definition is obviously the absence of war, the ending of a conflict. And when we think of war we think of soldiers killing each other and a few others on the way. Clearly Obama has not brought peace to the World in that basic sense. It was under his Presidency that the US expressed its intent of pulling out of Iraq and actually started doing so. On the other hand, it is now being discussed in the White House and in the Senate, the upgrade of the American forces based in Afghanistan, the other war-zone where the US are present. The decision is yet to be made between sending more troops or giving them more and better guns, none of the options being a prospect of having peace any closer.
But Peace must be more than just that. Many of the World’s conflicts are not active wars where soldiers kill each other and a few others on the way on a daily basis. The most obvious case being the Middle East issue, of course. There, Obama has sent a very clear signal by appointing a special representative to bring all the sides to the negotiation table in order to find a long-awaited solution. Yes, you can argue that he has expressed his full support for Israel, a bit counter-productive I must say, but that is just the American official position and it was not expected to change. His speech in Cairo was made of words, not actions, but words like “understanding”, “tolerance”, “peaceful co-habitation”. One single speech made more for the West-Arab relations than 8 years of Bush’s actions from the White House.
Iran, North Korea, Burma, Cuba. All cases of non-democratic governments which, in one way or the other, constitute threats to their own people and to the rest of Humanity. One can argue that Obama has not taken dramatic measures to remove dictators from power or to persuade them to change policies. But his predecessor had this bad habit of identifying enemies and then grab a few Marines and oust them from power. It didn’t work that well, did it?... So, let’s trust that Obama’s way of dealing with them, through International forums and trusting regional powers to give a hand, is a better way of doing it, even if less media-friendly.
Nuclear. Today’s anti-Obama comments seem to forget the impact of his anti-nuclear positions. It was Obama who decided to remove the controversial anti-missile shield from Poland and Czech Republic that made the Russians angry (then again, what doesn’t make the Russians angry?...) It was Obama who went to the UN, the World Peace meeting place by excellence, and made a speech about the need to eradicate nuclear weapons and prevent their spreading to other countries. I say that’s a good thing!
When it comes to Environment, Obama has been pushing the US to behave as the global leader they want to be perceived as. During the reaction to the crisis some measures went against green principles like the huge financial helps given to the car industry. But this can be seen as the less of two evils, the other evil being sending millions of people to unemployment. The Copenhagen summit is approaching and even if there are doubts about Obama’s willingness to commit the US with a strict set of environmental protection measures, I think he is still widely regarded as an opportunity for the US to slowly change their environmental policies.
The argument against the choice of Obama as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is that he was just doing his job! And damn, that is a good argument. Let’s face it, Bush screwed it all up a bit, didn’t he? He took so many wrong decisions and made things so messy that the next guy only had to make things right again. What should strike us as odd here is not that Obama cares about the rest of the World, that he doesn’t start wars, that he recycles, etc... but the fact that the guy before did nothing of the above!! Fine, give him a “well-done-Mr.-President Award” for doing what he is supposed to, but not a Nobel Prize!! It reflects the state of World politics when a World leader is awarded the highest international prize (debatable, I know...) for doing the right thing.
But he did! And that, my friends, is already something. And I guess the Chemistry Nobel Prize Award winner, or the Literature Nobel Prize Award winner also got their recognition for doing their job. In fact, they all got it for doing their job better than others!
And Obama is by far better than others. His election was a landmark to the World. Even basic Anti-Americans must recognize that the election of one single man has the power to inspire the World. And here is it is what I think justifies the Nobel Peace Prize to Mr. Obama: his power to inspire. Millions followed his campaign both in and out of the US. Yours truly here spent the election night wide awake in a fully packed hotel in Brussels following the counting of the votes and felt like a winner when the victory was clear! I followed live his acceptance speech, and his UN speech! Had I done that before in my life? No. Have I done it with any other politician? No way! Obama inspires people, inspires them through words, for sure, but eventually actions will follow the words. I think this is the AWARD OF HOPE, the Prize that awards faith, belief, positivity, commitment and above all hope that the World of tomorrow is a better World than today’s.
So I think I just made up my mind. Barack, dude, well done and congratulations on the Prize!!! But don’t forget, we will all be watching you (live or not) and will demand from you to transform all those words into actions and all that hope into global happiness!
ANC 09/10/2009 Brussels
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