Commentary

Nobel committee reacts to a sense of hope

by J. Brian Atwood

The Nobel Peace Prize committee has offered many surprises over the years, but the selection of President Barack Obama after only eight months in office beats them all.

I met with the chair and the executive director of the committee a few years ago in Oslo. I recall hearing a long, somewhat defensive rationale as to why they had selected Muhammad Yunus, father of the Grameen Bank and developer of the concept of microcredit. I agreed that innovative intervention in development and poverty alleviation were as likely to contribute to peace as the negotiation of a peace treaty.

No doubt this choice will cause the committee to offer an equally long explanation.

Clearly, this prize was given more for the hope that President Obama represents than for the reality of peace achieved. His diplomatic initiatives, messages to the world, and commitments to engagement have been impressive.

Yet, they are just the opening gambit in his efforts to create a nuclear-free world, bring a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and reach out to the Muslim world with a message of peace.

A recent U.N. Security Council resolution tightening the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was a reflection both of a commitment to the United Nations and international law, and an effort to box in Iran. This was a successful demonstration of international solidarity not evident previously.

It would not have happened had the United States not announced that it would drop its plan to deploy anti-missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. The diplomatic whirlwind started by Obama has begun to show results, but it is still in the early stages.

It is perhaps coincidental that the prize was announced on a day when the president meets with advisers to determine what to do about Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the most difficult issue he has yet decided, and there are only "least-worst" options. There will be no perfectly correct answer. The Peace Prize should give the president more power to persuade as he announces his new strategy.

The prize will no doubt strengthen his hand internationally, but it is an open question what it will do for him domestically. My guess is that if he had a choice, he would rather pass an ambitious and comprehensive health reform bill.

The small nation of Norway takes great pride in the Nobel Peace Prize, the only Nobel it decides. The committee has been accused in the past of using the prize to influence world events, and we will hear that again from skeptics and Obama detractors.

This year, the prize reflects the popularity abroad of an American president whose initial days in office have brought great hope to a troubled world. Apparently the Nobel Peace Prize Committee believed it could play a role in transforming that hope to reality.

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J. Brian Atwood, dean of the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute, was a career Foreign Service officer from 1966 to 1972, serving in the Ivory Coast and Spain. He was assistant secretary of state in the Carter administration and undersecretary of state and administrator of USAID in the Clinton administration.