Nobel Bookends

It took twenty-five years of tireless toil in some of the world's most unglamorous hellholes and with some of the most obstinate of warmakers for Jimmy Carter to draw the notice of the Nobel prize committee.  It has taken just nine months for Barack Obama to win the same recognition.

Some might see the same lordly caprice in the identical wage conferred by the Gospel landowner on the farmworker who toiled all day in the blazing sun and the johnny-come-lately arrival who spent but an hour in the fields at day's end.  But caprice is not the modus operandi of the Nobel prize committee.

There is an inescapable logic in its conferral of the Nobel Peace Prize on only these two American presidents in the ninety years since Woodrow Wilson launched the League of Nations.  The Carter and Obama awards bookend the belligerent hyper-nationalism that has infected Washington in recent decades and that peaked during the presidency of George W. Bush.

When the Nobel committee announced the prize for Carter in late 2002, the war drums were already beating in Washington at decibel level.  The Bush administration was rolling out its public relations campaign for war in Iraq, the president had just dared the United Nations to disprove its irrelevance, and conservative punditry was exhorting Americans to assume the mantle of the new Roman Empire.

The prize for Carter -- who embodied the other America, committed to peace through democracy and law -- was an elite-level warning against Washington's war frenzy, just as the twenty million demonstrators who flooded the world's streets four months later represented populist pushback against power and empire.

Of course, the warnings went unheeded.  Allies were castigated as surrender monkeys; Rupert Murdoch captured the moment by plastering on his flagship New York tabloid a doctored photo of the U.N. Security Council depicting allied foreign ministers as weasels.  America was dragged into the mire of Iraq, Guantánamo, Baghram, rendition, and torture, paying a huge price in squandered authority and skyrocketing military debt.  The conservative regime's devotion to nuclear weapons, its scorn for the "permission slips" of international law, and its earth-holocaust denial of accelerating climate change appalled much of the world.

In his first year in the White House, Obama has worked calmly and methodically to dismantle the psychosis of confrontation and belligerence that gripped Washington during the years of conservative hegemony.  He has lanced a boil, and the Nobel prize committee is attesting that the global body politic already feels healthier, safer, fairer.

The Carter and Obama prizes bookend the Bush years, but the two men's presidencies also bracket a quarter century when America seemed to bridle at, and break, the globally shared restraints of international law.  It is no coincidence that Obama was the first president since Carter who could go before the United Nations General Assembly and declare that America was current in paying its dues.  And it is no coincidence that the Nobel committee underlined America's rediscovery of the United Nations as a major element of its decision to award this year's peace prize to Obama.

Obama's peace prize will, of course, only incite the right to even more bilious rage.  Conservatives still don't get it.

Just a few days ago President Bush's ambassador on slavery, John Miller, doggedly insisted to readers of the New York Times that it is irrelevant to America if most of the world loathes our country’s foreign policy.  It is a comforting conservative conceit, but simply not true, that world publics are hostile to American policy because the United States is rich and powerful.  Even at the most personal level, people distinguish between the wealthy who are philanthropic and those who claim entitlement and sneer at the powerless. 

The United States was more rich and powerful in the Clinton than in the Bush years, yet it enjoyed high favorable ratings in most of the world.  Those ratings plunged by 20 to 40 percentage points virtually everywhere at a very precise moment -- when America invaded Iraq.  They stayed low as America's conservative leaders scorned international law, condoned torture, sabotaged climate change accords, and insisted they had a right to nuclear weapons.

Washington conservatives may have delighted in the motto cited by Cicero—Oderint dum metuant (“let them hate us so long as they fear us”)--which Caligula too had approvingly quoted.  They underestimated the ways in which the scorned could resist. 

It is a sign of how far America's global standing had fallen that the Nobel prize committee should be so moved by a neophyte president, no matter how personally remarkable, who simply reaffirmed the rule of law and the path of dialogue.  Obama is sure to face firestorms of conservative fury that might wilt the will of a weaker leader.  But the early Nobel recognition should also stiffen his spine against the Washington interest groups that will continue to try to limit his options to a binary manhood test of "strength" versus "weakness."

Comments

[Russy D. Sumariwalla]

This is an absolute masterpiece. There's no other way to describe it. More so because Jeff didn't have much time to write this. Congratulations Jeff. I wish all democrats and independents could read it.

[Beth Weems Pirtle]

Jeffrey,
How wonderful to hear and read your marvelous words. How I miss seeing all of you at UNA. This award for President Obama will make so many angry but will boost us up to do our work. Thank you for your contribution to making the world a peaceful place.

[Sally McMillan]

The question is being asked, "What has he done to deserve this prize?" He has verbalized a different approach for solving world problems, not through power and military might, but through diplomacy, cooperation, and respect for each other. This goal is welcomed by the world and the Nobel Peace Prize is one symbol that upholds that goal. It is a symbol that can strengthen his resolve to do what is right despite the tremendous opposition he is facing, especially in his own country, and despite the many problems in the world that he has inherited . It's a sign that the world shares the hope that he has given them. The hard work is still ahead. For him and for us who more than ever must hold him to the path of peace.

[Andrew Rice]

As always you have hit the nail on the head, Jeff. It is so easy to get caught up in the day-by-day agenda of tactical decisions that we lose sight of the big picture, You have reminded us of the basic values for which Obama stands and which the Nobel Prize committee has so rightly recognized.

[Larry Finkelstein]

Jeff,

Yours is the best explanation I've seen of the Nobel peace prize committee's offering and the President's accepting the nomination. The award applauds this country's swing toward the principles of an international order of cooperation for peace from the destructive doctrines of unilateral preventive war and "our way or the highway". The path to the goal remains long and rocky. Let's intensify our support for President Obama to keep the momentum going.

Larry Finkelstein

[Alma Morrison]

Yes, a very good article. And we will have to let the President and others know that we agree with his approach, because it will weaken him at home if only the critics of his approach speak out and deride this decision of the Nobel committee.

[Jeffrey Laurenti]

Thanks to all who read these quick reflections and thought to comment.

Alma Morrison's concern that "only the critics of his approach speak out and deride this decision of the Nobel committee" is well taken. Most striking is the difference in the reactions to the Nobel award inside the United States and abroad. Even liberal-leaning commentators feel obliged to express doubt, as Sally McMillan reports, as to "what he has done to deserve this." Yet abroad there is no such carping.

The derision expressed by the U.S.-based punditocracy toward Obama's award shows how clueless American security elites are about just how dangerous Washington's rogue-elephant truculence has seemed to people outside our borders. World publics in fact saw a militarized and confrontational United States as the biggest threat to maintenance of a peaceful world order. This is what led to astounding survey results in country after country showing people viewed the United States as a bigger threat to their own countries' security than Iran or North Korea or Russia, and showing more fear of George Bush than of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-il, or Vladimir Putin.

American conservatives habitually laugh these data off as irrelevant, or as telling us more about foreigners' distorted perceptions and their supposed hatred of Americans' freedom than they tell about U.S. policy. But, as Larry Finkelstein observes above, America's choice of direction -- between law-based "cooperation for peace" or unilateral "our way or the highway" -- has far more impact on a sustainable international order than any of the small regional "rogues."

The drive to lock in unilateral U.S. strategic dominance has been profoundly destabilizing to that global safety net of principles, law, and institutions. Obama's unquestioned change in direction is, therefore, in and of itself a Nobel-scale achievement for peace.

[Robin Miller]

Jeffrey,

Excellent article! Thanks for sharing.

Although my colleague feels the win was to soon, and that the committee should have waited for President Obama to be in office for 4 years. I agree with your statement Jeffrey: " But the early Nobel recognition should also stiffen his spine against the Washington interest groups that will continue to try to limit his options to a binary manhood test of "strength" versus "weakness." Why do individuals expect so much, my colleague what's him to him to fix Pakistan and Afghanistan--I realize that to whom much is give much is required, but he has placed peace and hope back in the hearts of many, we're not being enthralled with fear.

[James Crocket]

It is wonderful watching the left ignore reality! To forget 3,000 innocent dead Americans! To forget that the U.N. created the divided Korea's! That the U.N. put Israel in Palestine. That Reagan and Bush broke down the iron curtain! That Gaza is still a murder zone thanks to Jimmy Carter? That more than 50 million(women too) have voted in free elections because of "W" - including the Palestinians.

And Obama? He reads a teleprompter better than anyone!!