NOBEL OBAMA

Those who have expressed doubt about the naming of President Obama as the Nobel Peace Proze for this year have forgotten how dangerously close we came in the previous American administration to undoing the international network of agreements, networks, alliances and understandings that limit war and sometimes can make peace. Those who sit on the Nobel committees to make these decisions surely considered the basic question of who, or what organization made the largest, most important contribution to peacemaking in the past year. President Obama may have not been the only name of the list, but I think it can be argued that he deserved to be at the top of the list. Americans probably do not appreciate how much damage the Bush/Cheney years did to international cooperation and the climate for peace in the rest of the world. It is a symptom of the deep malaise in the right wing of our country that they complain the loudest about the decision to give President Obama the Nobel prize when it is exactly this right wing takeover of the foreign policy of the country that created the conditions in which an Obama could and should have emerged. They just do not get it. There is a huge, important and absolutely critical difference between an America bent on Empire and an America dedicated to leading an international community that pursues, to the extent that such a complicated network of nations, cultures and political interests can be expected to, a coordinated effort to reduce the use of violence to resolve conflicts in the world.

This does not mean that President Obama has done all that he could or will do to reduce the threat of war and the reality of war or to turn around the whole of the foriegn policy apparatus of the United States to a more reasonable and more effective commitment to real statesmanship and diplomacy. And, the Nobel has little ability to really influence the process of resolving the extremely difficult problems on the ground left by the last administration: Afghanistan, Middle East and Iran/North Korea. Nevertheless, the Nobel can give support to a President who seems committed to turning around our approach to the world in a way that benefits both our national interests and peace in the world and, for that, all Americans should be thankful.