The decision made by the Norwegian Nobel Committee was a complete surprise: Obama has been president of the United States for less than nine months, and he was not even named among the most likely candidates.
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According to the official wording of the Nobel Committee, Obama was awarded for "tremendous efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation among peoples."
The German online publication Spiegel Online quotes the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Thorbjørn Jagland: “Everything he began to do since the beginning of his presidency, and the way he changed the atmosphere around the world, is already enough reason to award him the Nobel Prize.” .
Jagland emphasized that the prize was awarded to Obama not for future achievements, but for achievements during his presidency. "His diplomacy is based on the principle that those who govern the world should do so on the basis of the values and perceptions shared by the majority of the world's population."
The award is 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.4 million). The award will be presented in Oslo on December 10.
Obama is the third American Democratic politician to be awarded Nobel Prize world over the past seven years. Before him, the prize was awarded to Jimmy Carter in 2002 and Al Gore in 2007 for their efforts to preserve the planet's climate.
In principle, the Nobel Peace Prize is one of the most problematic awards, because the criteria are not very defined, and the political component in it certainly plays a big role. I think Obama was able to win the Nobel Prize this year because he was the most promising politician. He proposed the most optimistic program for nuclear disarmament and improving the situation in the world. Now in the world there is a terrible hunger for some kind of positive. And Obama is now positive, probably the only leader on the world stage who is positive.
We live in a world of political losers: the latest initiatives of world leaders have failed, they have proposed some wild and unsuccessful things. Against their background, Obama proposed a model that could be successful. The system of control over nuclear weapons in the world collapsed with the end of the Cold War, Bush did not lift a finger, nor did the Russian leaders - no one did anything. We are now on the verge of turning this world nuclear: many countries have nuclear bomb, plus many are technically able to create it. Nuclear weapons are becoming cheaper, the technology can be bought, and some experts even predict that this technology will soon fall into the hands of organized crime. That Obama tried to reverse this trend, his desire to create new system control over nuclear weapons and prevent the global nuclearization of the world, the very idea of the possibility of getting out of this situation, apparently, inspired everyone so much that he was given a prize.
Of course, the fact that he was awarded the Nobel Prize is an advance. The advance is needed so that Obama cannot abandon this goal. Having launched an anti-nuclear initiative, he acquired many opponents in America.
In part, the Nobel Prize was awarded to him in order to support him in the fight against his own establishment and make him a hostage to his own proposals. In America different attitude to Obama's initiatives. Many believe that he is weakening American security by proposing nuclear disarmament, which is contrary to American national interests. And there is fear in the world that pressure on Obama within America will lead to him being forced to abandon his proposals. Therefore, it seems to me that in fact the Nobel Prize may become a “point of no return” for him.
It seems to me that after the Nobel Prize it will be more difficult for Obama. He will have less room to maneuver. The effect of Obama receiving the award may vary. On the one hand, international recognition is important for American public opinion. Because in America they don’t really understand how Obama is viewed abroad. On the other hand, many Americans do not like their political leaders to be so enthusiastically received abroad.
The Nobel Prize partly makes him a hostage to his own promises. Above all, promises to make it a priority to regain control over the spread of nuclear weapons, which was destroyed during the Cold War. In the end, he even supported the idea of “global zero” - the gradual complete abandonment of nuclear weapons. Many in America believe that this would fundamentally undermine US security and make America much more vulnerable. Many believe that Obama looks like a weakling on the international stage by proposing such things and weakening America's position in the world. America is now so strong militarily that no one can compare with it. It never occurs to anyone to step on national interests USA, because the advantage is colossal. The smaller this advantage is, the more there will be a desire to start putting pressure on America.
Obama is trying to change the model from dominance to leadership. And many Americans believe that dominance is a more effective model than global leadership.
The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate was announced in Oslo. He became the 44th President of the United States, who took office only in January of this year.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee considered Obama's "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" sufficient to award the prize.
“It is very rare that Obama has captured the world's attention and given hope for a better future to the extent that Obama has,” the five-member committee said in a statement. “His diplomacy is based on the concept that those who lead the world must do so based on the values and visions shared by the majority of the world's population,” the committee concluded.
The committee, led by Norwegian Thorbjörn Jagland, concluded its announcement as follows: “For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has tried to encourage precisely the kind of international policies and attitudes of which Obama is now the world's greatest harbinger. The committee supports Obama's call, "The time has come for all of us to accept our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges."
Obama greeted the news of the award with “embarrassment,” his press secretary Robert Gibbs, who woke the president in the middle of the night, told reporters.
Obama's closest aide, David Axelrod, told Reuters that Obama's team was "just as surprised" by the Nobel committee's decision as many around the world.
With Obama for the right to be called Nobel laureate Two hundred applicants competed. This year's favorites were, in particular, the Zimbabwean opposition leader who later became prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, and the Chinese dissident and AIDS activist Hu Jia, who was arrested in 2007 for “inciting the overthrow of the state system.”
The chances of the Colombian senator Piedad Cordoba, who achieved the release of 16 hostages from leftist rebels, the Jordanian prince Ghazi bin Mohammed, who teaches philosophy at the university, and the Afghan human rights activist Sima Samar were also highly assessed. Their names topped the list of the Norwegian International Peace Research Institute, presented on the eve of the vote.
The editor of the magazine “Russia in Global Affairs” admitted to Gazeta.Ru that, like everyone else, he does not understand the choice of the Nobel Committee. “In my memory, this is the first time that a bonus is given not for actions, but for words,” the expert noted. He suggested that in this case the Nobel Committee was guided by its traditional principle, which states that its decisions should contribute to the implementation of the ideas that Alfred Nobel spoke about. “But it’s still strange, because Obama is the leader of a country waging two wars,” Lukyanov recalled.
None political consequences the Nobel committee will not have a decision, in addition, it could put both sides in a difficult position: Obama received an advance that he did not ask for and will now have to justify, and the committee may have to answer a number of unpleasant questions if Obama has to fight with Iran, believes Gazeta.Ru’s interlocutor.
The award ceremony will take place on December 10 in Oslo in the presence of the King of Norway and members royal family. Obama will be presented with a laureate diploma, a medal and a cash check. The amount of the prize is not constant, it changes depending on the income of the Nobel Foundation. This year it is 10 million Swedish kronor.
Young people, as you know, prefer to fight, while gray-haired elders fight for peace.
Contrast Award
There is no doubt that Obama himself considers the award well-deserved. Indeed, in the little over six months that have passed since his inauguration, the US President has shown himself to be not just an active politician, but also an extremely an open person who know how to listen to someone else's point of view. In itself, this is not God knows what kind of dignity, but in comparison with his predecessor on the American “throne”, Obama looks like some kind of Mahatma Gandhi.
The formulation of the Nobel Committee is traditional and streamlined: “For his enormous efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples, in recognition of his leading role in the peace process, which today characterizes an important part of the life of the international community.” Not a word about the fact that for these same efforts and this role, a good half of Americans cannot stand Obama: they believe that Barack strengthens diplomacy in the world too much and does too little in construction and healthcare at home. And now we can assume that such export activity may cost Obama a second term.
American dreams
The fact is that the United States is characterized by an extremely specific attitude towards the world. Until 1914-18, Americans professed complete isolationism - no serious relations with other countries, except perhaps Mexico, from which the States bit off one piece after another. After a short burst of activity, thanks to which the Americans even managed to become the victorious power in the First World War, they again went into diplomatic underground. And only after Pearl Harbor the country’s foreign policy doctrine changed 180 degrees. The United States decided that it had a tremendous responsibility to maintain world peace. And this can only be achieved in one way: by building military bases all over the planet and landing troops wherever there is some kind of disobedience.
Barack Obama seems to be offering a third way - to actively participate in international affairs and leave the baton at home. It was this decision, incomprehensible and unpleasant for his electorate, that delighted the Nobel Committee.
Soviet precedent
Of course, the award is an advance to Obama. Encouragement from old lady Europe - continue, tanned, in the same spirit. But the advance looks extremely risky. Let us recall that Mikhail Gorbachev received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 - under this undoubted peacemaker, riot police were created, the Caucasus flared up, many peaceful areas became the scene of battles, hundreds of southern villages were burned to the ground, and northern ones were abandoned by residents due to extreme poverty.
Alfred Nobel was a dreamer and idealist. Few people remember now that, according to his will, the prize was intended for young talented poor people so that they could devote themselves entirely to scientific research or your favorite art. However, the difficulty of identifying genius at an early stage led to the idea being turned inside out. The Nobel Prize is now compared to a lifebuoy thrown to a drowning man who has already made it to shore.
But in the case of Obama, Nobel's idea is embodied in its original form. Yes, the US President does not particularly need the monetary part of the award (and there is no doubt that it will be spent on charity), but otherwise he is that very young talent whose further development must be stimulated. The influence of the “hawks” in America is growing again, the black president has not yet achieved much success on the domestic front, so the award is a signal to the world to Obama: do not retreat, we believe in you.
And gratitude for the fact that after his speeches the podium smells of expensive perfume, and not of sulfur, as it did under his predecessor.
P.S. On the day Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, it became known about the Pentagon's plans to deploy a military radar station in Ukraine.
A petition has appeared on the White House website calling on US President Barack Obama to return the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him in 2009.
The petition condemns the US President's aggressive policies towards the countries of the Middle East, aimed at "regime change." In particular, it is said that military operations in Libya and Syria brought nothing but human losses.
In September, former director of the Nobel Institute Geer Lundestad said that US President Barack Obama, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, did not live up to the expectations placed on him. "Many of Obama's supporters think this was a mistake," Lundestad said. “The presentation of the prize did not give the result that the committee members expected.”
Then Barack Obama himself was surprised by the committee's decision. Senior presidential adviser David Axelrod, commenting on this event and responding to the remark “the world community is shocked,” said: “So are we.”
Of course, “the world was surprised when President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize.” But in 2009, the prize was seen as a reward for a leader who had put forward an ambitious plan to end the militaristic regime. foreign policy USA.
Six years later, even many of Obama's supporters doubt whether he deserves the award. In his memoirs, Geir Lundestad, the director of the Nobel Institute who left his post last year, wrote that awarding the prize to Obama "was only partly correct."
"Even many of Obama's supporters believed it was a mistake," he writes.
“Essentially, it was not possible to achieve what the committee hoped for”...
There have been plenty of complaints about Obama over the past 6 years. Consider the president's drone program, which is regularly criticized for its lack of transparency and accountability. Especially given the incomplete intelligence data, when the government cannot give a clear answer as to who the next victim will be. "Most of the people killed are not on the list, and the government doesn't know their names," Mika Zenko, a researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the New York Times.
Obama is accused of failing to keep his campaign promise to close Guantanamo Bay and failing to act decisively on the Syrian crisis.
The "leader of the free world" has some successes while in office: securing the Iran nuclear deal despite numerous Republican objections - earning applause from security, diplomatic and nuclear power. He also ended the war in Afghanistan and withdrew the bulk of American troops from Iraq - although the latter were mired there as if in a swamp.
“With ISIS walking around the world and defiantly disobeying Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. This picture suggests that the current administration could have done more to keep Iraq from catastrophe. But, of course, there is no evidence that the presence of US troops would influence the consolidation or collapse of the state,” Jason Brownlee, a professor at the University of the Middle East in Texas, tells the Washington Post.
Speaking about Obama's legacy, Nikhil Singh, a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University, told New York Magazine in January of this year: “Obama was also hooked on overt US military action, just as George W. Bush was. What did he do to put his theses into practice, and even more so to change the existing situation? “Issuing memorandums against torture instead of bringing the executioners to justice?”
“Behavior like this condemns us to an uncertain future or, worse, a new round of dirty wars. Such ambivalence can be seen as a kind of achievement, an achievement not yet clear to the Obama administration, which can be called a banal extension of the Bush-Cheney policy. Obama's legacy is not yet set in stone, but it will extend beyond periods of war and peace,” writes Think Progress.
Thorborn Jagland, chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, said President Obama today "really needs to think seriously" about immediately returning the Nobel Peace Prize.
Jagland, in the presence of four other committee members, said they had never before asked for the return of the peace prize, "not even to damned war criminals like Kissinger." But the reduction of the military contingent in Afghanistan by “as much as” 10% significantly ended the period when “it was still possible to behave without remembering that you were a Peace Prize winner. Guantanamo Bay remains open. Libya was bombed. Bin Laden was blown up instead of being brought to trial. Now several American soldiers it was decided to send him home... but the US goal - the occupation of Afghanistan - remained unchanged. And don’t even think about Yemen!”
The committee awarded the prize to Obama in 2009 after he made a series of speeches in his first months in office: on “creating a new climate of multilateral diplomacy ... ... on emphasizing the role of the United Nations ... dialogue and negotiation as tools for solutions international conflicts... and the future of a world free of nuclear weapons."
Members of the Nobel Committee listened again and again to Obama's speech in Cairo, raising their glasses to a glorious future: a black man leading America and the world into new era peace, hope and goodwill. “Within a few hours, it was as if we were 18-year-old students again at the beautiful and sunny University of Bergen! Oh, how we cried with joy!”
The Chairman says that "the Committee does not intend the penalty of getting the award back because they still like Obama, and that sending the medal back in a box by snail mail could help avoid the embarrassment of having to publicly return the award... The White house declined to comment,” writes The Final Edition.
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama in 2009 was met with criticism in the US itself. Many argued that he did nothing worthy of the award. Geir Lundestad explains the committee's decision by saying that he hoped to strengthen the position of the new president with an award.
“No Nobel Peace Prize has ever received as much attention as Barack Obama's in 2009,” Lundestad writes.
“Now even Obama supporters believe that the award was a mistake. In the sense that the committee did not achieve what it hoped for.”
Obama received the award from the hands of the Chairman of the Nobel Committee T. Jagland. It is known that at first Obama did not intend to personally go to the Norwegian capital to receive the award.
His staff wondered if there were any precedents for laureates skipping the ceremony. But this only happened occasionally, for example when dissidents were detained by their governments. “The White House then quickly realized that they had to go,” the WashingtonTimes quotes Lundestad.
It is significant that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 to former US Vice President Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change led to the resignation of one of the committee members. According to the rules of the Nobel Committee, the shortlist of candidates for the prize and all the circumstances surrounding the award must remain secret for half a century.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been the most controversial award throughout its history. Critics say the award has become too politicized; Obama's case is not the first time that a person's contributions to peace have fallen short of the award's high status.
Elena Khanenkova
* Terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation.
Few people remember that in October 2009, nine months after taking office, President Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize. The meaning of this award, presented “for enormous efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” was difficult to understand even then. The Nobel Committee emphasized Obama's desire to limit the spread of nuclear weapons and create a new atmosphere in international relations, especially in contacts with the Muslim world.
The very election of Obama as President of the United States deserved some kind of award, perhaps even a Peace Prize for Americans who gave the main post in their country to a black man or, as they now say, an African American.
Of course, Obama is only half of the Negroid race, and he received this half not from an African-American, but from an African, and he was raised primarily by his maternal grandparents. However, we know that there is a “stronger” blood that society believes (see Stanisław Ossowski, Social Connections and the Legacy of Blood, 1939) to outweigh the weaker ones. Negro blood (like Jewish blood) is inherited by many generations. This is very interesting and even funny: supporters of the Aryan theory believe that their blood is so weak that even 12.5% of “impurities” can spoil it (put a mark on it)?
Context
Did Obama deserve the Nobel Prize?
Maariv 06/01/2016Obama should return the peace prize
The National Interest 04/07/2016Barack Obama's legacy
El UNIVERSAL 01/23/2016Barack Obama and the Nobel syndrome
La Regle du Jeu 11/24/2015How to get a Nobel Prize
RFI Russian Service 10/12/2015 Obama represents not black people, but a polished class of lawyer-politicians, Harvard graduates and similar elitists educational institutions, who know how to rant beautifully and adhere to not too deep, but left-wing convictions.After seven years, it began to seem that Obama should return his bonus, which, however, he does not remember. They didn’t even boast about her at the Democratic conventions, although Hillary Clinton was general secretary and initiated most of Obama's foreign policy projects during his first term. “Peace” as such is not the best slogan for elections today.
In 2010, Obama and Clinton extended the strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia, concluded in 1991 and concerning arms control (by the way, one of its consequences was that Ukraine lost its nuclear weapons in exchange for guarantees of its territorial integrity). At the same time, Clinton talked a lot about resuming (friendly) relations with Russia, which began to make claims against the countries of Eastern Europe, protesting against their sovereign decisions to host missiles as part of the missile defense system.
Now, two years after the annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of hostilities in eastern Ukraine, the American administration continues to talk about sanctions, ceasefires and the Minsk agreements, but Russia already knows that at least until November it will be able to do whatever it wants on its western border at will.
In the “Muslim world,” if such a thing exists, the United States suffered only defeats. Despite Obama's repeated assurances that “Assad must go,” the Syrian president did not listen. Moreover, although he signed a statement in which he promised to refuse to use chemical weapons, such attacks continue. In Syria, according to various estimates, 400,000 people (mostly civilians) were killed, and several million fled the country. Only a small fraction of them have reached Europe, while millions remain in terrible conditions in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, posing a threat to the internal stability of these states. Decisive role Russia is now playing in the Syrian operation, on whose side Turkey has taken, having turned its back on the United States after a suspicious “coup d’etat.” So Obama has lost his most important ally in the Middle East.
The Americans left Iraq and then (partially) returned there. Both Iraq and Afghanistan are now in a state of civil war with - whatever you call them - Islamic fundamentalists, ISIS, Daesh (organization banned in the Russian Federation, approx.). Libya, however, too. The United States signed an agreement with Iran, according to which (although according to the spirit, not the letter of the document) Tehran can have nuclear potential. What about the successes of US foreign policy? A climate agreement that no one respects, and the “normalization” of relations with Cuba, the fruits of which were a new wave of repression against dissidents and a flow of American tourists to the island.