There’s big news this morning: Barak Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  According to the committee, here’s why: “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given it’s people hope for a better future.  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.”

Huh?

Upon reading the headline and rationale, I had to do a triple take.  First response: this is an Onion story that someone allowed to get way out of hand.  Second response: clearly there’s a mistake, after all, the nominations were made before Barak Obama was even in office.  He hasn’t had time to engage in any diplomacy.  Third response: shocked silence.

I’m an enormous supporter of Obama.  I generally like his vision and thinking on health care reform, nuclear disarmament, and middle east peace.  But what has Obama done to deserve a Nobel peace prize?  I wasn’t aware that we were handing them out for intentions or even vision; and after looking at the language describing the prize, I remember why:

The Nobel peace prize should be awarded to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses [Emphasis Added].

There are a couple of keywords in that passage which defy intentions, for starters: “shall have done” and “best work”.  Both phrases have one thing in common: they describe accomplishments of the past and not the potential of the future.  Moreover, it’s more or less an expectation that the award be given for work already done.  A brief review of past Nobel laureates clearly demonstrates this:

• Martin Luther King Jr (1964).  King was the face of the human rights struggle in the United States, and his philosophy, eloquence and organizational ability are probably the single most important factors of it’s success.  Even though he was the youngest person ever to receive a Nobel Prize, 1964 came after the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the March on Washington, and “I Have a Dream”.
• Mikhail Gorbachev (1990).  This guy had just finished dismantling communism, thereby ending the cold war.  (And all this while worrying about the very real possibility of a military coup.)  It’s hard to argue that removing the threat of Nuclear Holocaust didn’t make the world a better place.
• Nelson Mandela (1993).  After spending 27 years in prison for the audacious crime of demanding equality (given the much more seditious label of sabotage), he had finally realized a major agreement with the regime of South Africa, ending apartheid forever.  He then went on to unite his country and serve as the first president elected in a fully representative democratic election.

And now, Obama …  but what has he accomplished?

Sure, our European allies no longer hate us. Except … they never hated us in the first place.  The strained feelings of the past few years have had much more more in common with a serious sibling disagreement than anything else.  Now that the real problem (George W. Bush) is gone, relations have largely gone back to what they were prior to 2003.

I’ll give you that Obama has some wonderful plans to bring about peace in the Middle East …  But that has been a major goal of every US administration for the last fifty years.  And at the moment he’s made about the same amount of progress as his predecessor: that is to say, none at all.

Awarding the prize without a true legacy of accomplishment is not only controversial, it’s short sighted; and this is the second time in the last three years that the award has been a real stinker.  The 2007 award, given to Al Gore for his educational efforts to combat climate change, was also a tremendous disappointment.  Why so many divisive prizes all of a sudden?

Nobel prizes aren’t supposed to be controversial, they’re supposed to be obvious.  The scientific prizes (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine) aren’t awarded at the time discoveries are made, but after the utility and importance of those discoveries is known, which requires time.  It isn’t uncommon for the award to recognize work that was done twenty or thirty years ago.  Ditto for literature.  Why should the peace prize be any different?

Nor was there a scarcity of qualified nominees, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times summarizes it well:

[What of]  Dr. Denis Mukwege at the Panzi Hospital in eastern Congo, or Jo and Lyn Lusi in the Heal Africa Hospital of western Congo, or Dr. Paul Farmer of Partners in Health for his tireless work in Haiti and Rwanda, or Greg Mortensen traipsing all over Pakistan and Afghanistan to build schools, or Dr. Catherine Hamlin working for half a century to fight obstetric fistula and maternal mortality in Ethiopia … or so many others.

Obama has the potential to be one of the truly great presidents, but before showering him with accolades, we should allow him to actually accomplish something monumental.  Becoming the first African American president was an impressive start, but is insufficient for a great legacy.  It’s impressive the way a birth is impressive and for largely the same reasons: it was the beautiful start of something new.

But Nobel Prizes aren’t birthday gifts, they’re lifetime achievement awards.  So shouldn’t we wait for a little bit more of that life to happen before handing it out?

Tags: Nobel Peace Prize 2009,Obama
Categories: Rants
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