Haaretz.
The winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize let us down and neglected whole regions like South America and Africa.
Nitzan Horowitz (Washington)
Many eyebrows were raised when U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize a few months after the start of his term. The president received the Nobel because of the promise seen in the election of a man like him, and in the vision for the world it implied. Did he fulfill that promise? It’s very doubtful.
The prize committee’s official reason for choosing Obama was his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people.” Even then it sounded surprising, especially since Obama had barely had time to do anything.
But as the years went by the surprise was replaced by a sense of bitterness. His international efforts certainly weren’t “extraordinary,” and the Nobel committee can’t revoke the prize after the fact. If it could, it might have.
Of course, Obama, who is now hosting a raft of events to sum up his two terms, is a good president – for his country and its people. Were it not for the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution that limits the presidency to two terms, he would easily have been elected to a third term.
Despite his opponents’ belligerent hysteria, he is greatly admired in the Democratic Party, and it’s hard to argue with his economic achievements. Obama took over a country in severe crisis – a legacy from his predecessor George W. Bush – and will hand his successor a country in far better condition – economic growth, financial stability and low unemployment.
But the world he will hand over is a less stable world. Obama isn’t entirely to blame for that, as his enemies obsessively insist, but his policies, which occasionally ran opposite the prize committee’s reasoning, are partly responsible.
The most common argument against him – that the Islamic State arose due to American capitulation in the Middle East – is incorrect. The Islamic State arose from the collapse of Iraq after Bush’s deceptive and destructive war. But there are numerous examples of international instability to which American policy, characterized by special interests and cynicism, contributed.
Most of these issues are never discussed, and many people aren’t aware of the depth of the crisis; for example, in South America. Although Michelle and Barack pranced around Havana, and the idiotic boycott of Cuba came to an end, the United States is standing on the sidelines while countries like Brazil and Argentina are sinking into a political and economic mire.
The great promise embodied by South America’s socioeconomic developments the previous decade have been replaced by bitter despair. Obama’s Washington isn’t lending a hand. The process of ousting Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is another drop of poison in the tribulations of a key country that through tremendous effort was extricated from decades of tyranny and now sees no hope on the horizon.
Another clichéd complaint against Obama, even in Israel, is that he is naive. His opponents complain that he sees international relations through rose-colored glasses and doesn’t understand the balance of powers.
The opposite is true. Obama is anything but naive. He has an excellent understanding of the balance of powers, and has chosen to act in accordance with it rather than with the ideals in whose name he was elected and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Consider Africa. Part of the hope he aroused stemmed from the fact that he is black – the first black president, with clear African roots. So yes, he visited the village where his Kenyan father was born and talked a lot about Africa. But he made no “extraordinary efforts” to improve the situation there. That’s called realpolitik. Naivete would have been preferable.
When he leaves the White House he will be 55 years old – still a young man, talented, smart and with rare experience. He says he’ll devote the coming years to the worldwide refugee problem – a matter close to his heart. Who knows, maybe he’ll fulfill the promise of 2008 and justify the prize he received.