Obama's Disarmament Prize
My first reaction was "how can a guy who's only been in office for nine months win the Nobel Peace Prize?" But once I woke up and thought about it for a few minutes I realized that the honor being bestowed on President Obama is well-deserved for one very good reason: his commitment to work for a world without nuclear weapons. Not only did he commit himself to this goal in April in Prague, but he has already taken many concrete steps in the right direction by commencing new arms reduction talks with Russia; committing himself to seek ratification and entry into force of a global nuclear test ban treaty; serving as the first U.S. president ever to chair a United Nations Security Council meeting on nuclear disarmament; pledging to secure all remaining "loose nukes" and nuclear bomb-making materials within four years, and holding a summit on the subject in Washington next year; and engaging in smart diplomacy by talking to Iran about getting rid of its nuclear weapons program. In short, he hasn't just talked about nuclear disarmament, he and his administration are out there working towards it every day. For this alone, his Nobel Peace Prize is well-deserved.
You missed three big ones:
1. His *applied* worldwide commitment to joint action through genuine diplomacy.
2. Pouring cold water on the hyper-aggressive provocation of expanding NATO into ex-USSR territory.
3. Canceling the insane nostalgia of installing Cold War missiles in Czech Republic and Poland.
October 9, 2009 8:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
All true, but I think those just serve to reinforce the trend that's been established for some time.
Among the first things I recall hearing about Obama that impressed me was his work with Sen. Lugar on securing nuclear materials in the former Soviet states.
My reaction was along the lines of "Hunh. An honest to goodness grown-up, newly elected to the Senate. What a pleasant surprise."
Non-proliferation isn't sexy, or especially interesting or uplifting, and there aren't a lot of voters and civic groups that it appeals to - it's just really, really, really important.
If you'd asked me if it was worth a Nobel I probably would have been dubious except perhaps as an aspirational recognition.
But, I grew up in the States and really don't know what it feels like to be looking at things from outside the most heavily armed nation in history.
October 10, 2009 9:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Your comments are worthy, and poignant, and fine generally, not taking away from (almost) anything I said.
The points I made I do regard as exceedingly important, proliferation aside. The Bush nuts had begun a vast new Cold War that has been very badly unreported and Putin was understandably ready to rip his lips off, and God knows what else.
Ironic as you toss off this dismissive fluff about "aspirational," that the administration acting through Hillary Clinton has just cracked one of the world's most awful foreign policy problems, Turkey-Armenia, long-regarded as insoluble.
October 10, 2009 8:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ironic as you toss off this dismissive fluff about "aspirational
My bad if my tone suggested I think dismissively or fluffily about aspirations or recognizing them. They're not concrete, like a signed treaty, but without them no treaty would ever happen, nor much other progress in any human endeavor. My biggest problem with Obama's Nobel is the yammering from his knee-jerk critics, which is admittedly unrelated to the prize itself.
Frankly - I had forgotten the extent of the new Cold War, and I'm chagrined. South Ossetia was recent but there's a long list and only a few of them can be suggested to have a good-faith explanation. There's no other explanation for Condoleeza Rice taking the NSA chair at the beginning of the first Bush II administration than Russia was looked at and would be addressed as, a threat to be aggressively confronted. And a gravy train for defense manufacturers and contractors.
What can I say - it's been a long century.
October 11, 2009 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, true, but I think for the rest of the world it IS primarily his stand against nuclear weapons. We forget how the rest of the world views nukes, we being the only country to have used them against another country. It's kind of the land mine issue writ large--the rest of the world abhorred them and we wouldn't even sign the treaty banning them.
Americans who don't pay attention to foreign affairs or who do so only from their own imperial perspective don't understand that Obama has had many significant accomplishments that are appreciated by most of the rest of the world.
October 10, 2009 12:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Many, yes. The Nobel people got this right. It was a shrewd move, and being unexpected doesn't take away from that. Thanks for your answer, by the way.
October 10, 2009 8:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm serious when I say it was very underreported in U.S. media. Putin was utterly enraged and certainly not just over South Ossetia, a point that Americans don't seem to understand. Whole thing is flipped now. USA getting pretty good press in Moscow. Joint diplomacy we are beginning to see.
All of which makes sense because we *won* the Cold War, and only such masturbatory nostalgists as Cheney and co. would wish to refight it, but they did. They obvious pined for it.
October 11, 2009 2:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would add cancellation of the F-22. That ends 70 years of investment in strategic bombing.
His challenge -- ours -- going forward will be other of what the Stockholm Peace Research Institute calls "one-sided" violence directed at civilians, not just incidental to armed conflict.
SPIRI insists ...
That might be "counter-terrorism" or even "population-centric counter-insurgency", though I expect that the Swedes and Swiss would rather call it "peace operations".
October 9, 2009 8:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
My reaction was, "Another similarity to Mikhail Gorbachev." Gorbachev won the Peace Prize in 1990 as the Soviet Union was crumbling around him.
October 9, 2009 9:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ouch. But great observation.
October 9, 2009 10:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
You'd have to tell in more depth what you are referring to.
1. USSR was a failed, totalitarian system which caved in and Gorbachev was at best, confused.
2. USA is a democracy which shows not sign of collapse (and if you want to snark about that, maybe do it in detail so it can be a conversation and not a one-liner), and Obama is completely brilliant.
So the comparisons may have limited value. IMHO, Donal.
October 9, 2009 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
But there are some similarities between the US and the FSU as well: Huge foreign debt, heavy arms production, large standing military, extensive espionage, a history of military incursions, industrial approach to agriculture, large incarcerated population, indifference to pollution, reliance on fossil fuels, and both used space exploration and international sports for political propaganda.
October 9, 2009 12:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I believe the purported similarities are far more distracting than informative; just my opinion.
By the way this is a Republican meme. Obama's USA like end of USSR. They *love* it!
October 9, 2009 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Republicans love it because they are partisan hacks--so what?
There are still reasons for thinking the US might be in a decline, and yes, it would surely be a steeper decline if McCain had won.
October 9, 2009 1:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good points all, Donal, though I think too little is made of Gorbachev's decision to not try to hold back the collapse by any means necessary. It wasn't pretty, but it wasn't nearly as ugly as it could have been.
I'd also like to say "oh c'mon" - the FSB is "heavily armed and extremely dangerous" - but they only spend a fraction of what the USA does, even accounting for currency value differences. It's part of the"rest of the world" referred to in the phrase "spends more than the rest of the world combined".
Then you look at the debt, incarceration rates and reliance on petroleum, and I think it's pretty clear that we're way out in front on just about every one of those measures.
USA number, uh, one?
October 10, 2009 9:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
And Gorbachev deserved it, for seeing and acting on the world as it was rather than as the thugs who'd run the U.S.S.R. for 60 years thought it was.
October 9, 2009 11:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps, but was the election of a leader that left the ideology behind a signal of the collapse to come, or just a coincidence?
October 9, 2009 12:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc?
Perhaps Gorbachev's "election" to leadership of the Communist Party was a recognition of change happening and an attempt to deal with it.
Many changes are in store here, too. Some of them we're ready for. Some, not so much.
This Nobel award is not a baleful portent from the Gods in a Greek tragedy. It's a sign that the world community is hopeful we're getting our act together, at least in terms of our international relationships. I'm hopeful, too.
October 9, 2009 2:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd like to think we can achieve a more graceful transition, but when I see the rich stealing with both hands, I half expect Mme Defarge will be doing her knitting in a few years.
October 9, 2009 4:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
a more graceful transition
Looking at the financial regulatory desert, "plus ca change...".
It's gonna take some nimble hopping, and the first year of response to meltdown is more like Tom De Lay than Michael Flatley...
October 9, 2009 11:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oops. My comment above was intended to be a reply to Donal.
October 9, 2009 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink