Potential obstacle to peace: Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize

Writing in The New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman said that President Obama’s Nobel Prize for Peace “devalued” the prize. The Nobel committee “did President Obama no favors awarding him its peace prize,” wrote Friedman.

The Washington Post wrote that the prize “almost makes you embarrassed for the honoree” because “a more suitable time for the prize would have been after” his efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples had borne some fruit.

The Wall Street Journal called the Nobel committee’s decision “the world’s first futures prize in diplomacy.”

The Kansas City Star wrote: “Critics, even some supporters, suggest it’s too early to hand this young president the world’s most prestigious award.”

Hitting the nail on the head were the Miami Herald and Jim Hoagland (writing in the Washington Post). The Herald: “Now he has to deliver on those great expectations.” Hoagland: “These politically correct Vikings may have given Obama not the boost toward greatness they intend, but a crippling burden — if he and his staff take the award too seriously. This is after all a White House still in campaign mode and engaged in continuous Obamacentric perception management.” Read the related blog post, “Obama awarded the Nobel – what a joke!”

The worst possible self-perception of Obama is this idea: “Merely because of who I am, then whatever I suggest is the only way to peace.” Reality check: Obama’s popularity rating right now among all Israelis is 4% — that is, only 4% of the populace thinks he is pro-Israel. Obama’s self-perception needs a course correction when it comes to Israel. Otherwise, he will find that, Nobel Prize or no, it is not he who will convince Israelis to take dangerous steps toward the creation of a Palestinian state.

One also wonders whether the Nobel committee’s praise of Obama for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” will give him weak knees on Iran. Will a premature peace-prized president hesitate on Iran so as not to soil his Nobel credential?

Call a spade a spade: Was Franklin D. Roosevelt an enemy of peace? Was General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander during WW II, an enemy of peace? No — all would answer. Because the pursuit of peace, in this real world of ours, sometimes requires war. The war effort by President Roosevelt, General Eisenhower and the Allies to defeat Nazism brought . . . peace!

Will Obama’s admirable aspiration to bring peace distort his judgement on Iran and on Israel? Will he fail to see that, unlike himself, millions of people in the Arab world prefer the destruction of Israel to peace, and have none of Obama’s humanistic qualms?

Will Obama’s goal of a nuclear-free world encourage him to say to Israel: OK, you get rid of your nukes, and I’ll get Iran to stop its nuclear program? Will Obama ignore the indisputable fact that it is only Israel’s reputed nuclear capacity that has deterred several countries from destroying the peace in the Middle East by destroying Israel?

Will all that praise from Norway go to the president’s head?

One cannot blame Obama for winning a prize he did not seek. A different response from the one he gave, however, would have been in order. A very humble and human response, both honoring the prestige of the award and sustaining his own aspirations for a peaceful world, would have been for him to decline it.

Had he done so, his reputation abroad would have jumped even higher than it already is, while also preserving the balance that any American president needs: the ability and flexibility to use any means to achieve peace, including, sometimes, war.