War and Peace and Nobel Prizes

A look back at 2009, when President Barack Obama was crowned in Oslo

President Barack Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, on December 10, 2009. To his right is Thorbjørn Jagland, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. (Official White House photo by Samantha Appleton)

Our president, Donald Trump, has made no secret of his desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The governments of Pakistan and Israel, along with everyone else, have noted this. Those governments have nominated Trump for the prize.

In a column for The Spectator World, I addressed this.

As I stated in that column, three sitting presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize. A former president, Jimmy Carter, won it in 2002.

Theodore Roosevelt—who was president from 1901 (when the Nobel prizes began) to 1909—was the laureate for 1906. Woodrow Wilson was the laureate for 1919. Barack Obama was the laureate for 2009.

The awards to TR and Obama are two of the most controversial in Nobel history.

What did the New York Times say when Roosevelt got it? “A broad smile illuminated the face of the globe when the prize was awarded to the most war-like citizen of these United States.”

About the award to Obama, many were upset: people on left and right alike. I wrote at length about the 2009 award in a book called “Peace, They Say: A History of the Nobel Peace Prize, the World’s Most Famous and Controversial Prize.” I found it interesting to read that chapter—my Obama chapter—before writing my Spectator World column. I had almost forgotten the world of only 15 or so years ago.

According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee—the five men and women who bestow the prize—Obama won for a variety of reasons. Mainly, however, he won for not being his predecessor: George W. Bush.

That’s how I, among many others, saw it.

Today, the Republican Party may view Bush as a “weak lib,” but yesterday, much of the world saw him as an extreme and dangerous right-winger.

Let me quote my book:

When Obama was elected, many people said that, after an eight-year hiatus, America would rejoin the world. In their view, Bush was an insular, nationalistic, chest-thumping cowboy who had turned his back on the world. Obama would be just the opposite.

The peace prize is announced in Oslo at 11 in the morning, usually the second Friday in October. We Americans are asleep (most of us). On that Friday in 2009, President Obama strode into the Rose Garden and said, “Well, this is not how I expected to wake up this morning.”

Like many others, he seemed perplexed by the Nobel committee’s decision, and he seemed a little embarrassed, too.

He said,

I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel committee. Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.

Obama continued,

To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize—men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.

There would be a “but”:

But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women, and all Americans, want to build—a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents. And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it’s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action—a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.

In my book, I say, “That was a graceful handling of an awkward situation into which the president had been put.”

Question: Did the Norwegian Nobel Committee give Obama the prize for what he had accomplished already or to spur him to great things for the future? At different times, the chairman of the committee—under fire to explain the committee’s decision—said both.

In 2010, I interviewed Lech Wałęsa, the Polish leader, who had won the prize in 1983. He said, “The wise men of the committee gave the award to Obama for his potential merit, and to encourage him not to stray from a path of peace.” Then he said, with a twinkle in his eye—and remember, he was talking to me—“Well, we could all get a Nobel prize for our potential merit, and in order to be encouraged. For example, every journalist could get the Nobel prize to be encouraged to write better.”

I will quote further from my book:

In America, conservatives were scornful, as could well be imagined. Many said, in essence, “What else do you expect from a group of Scandinavian lefties who have already given their prize to Gore, Carter, ElBaradei, and Annan?” The writer Mark Steyn put it pithily and pointedly: The award to Obama was “an exquisite act of condescension from the Norwegians, a dog biscuit and a pat on the head to the American hyperpower for agreeing to spay itself into a hyperpoodle.”

Yet even some people on the left, even some Obama supporters, were taken aback:

Joe Klein of Time magazine wrote, “Let’s face it: this prize is premature to the point of ridiculousness.” Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post wrote something similar: “This is ridiculous—embarrassing, even. I admire President Obama. I like President Obama. I voted for President Obama. But the peace prize? This is supposed to be for doing, not being—and it’s no disrespect to the president to suggest he hasn’t done much yet. Certainly not enough to justify this prize.”

The New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman had an interesting suggestion: that Obama go to Oslo and make a surprise announcement: He would accept the award “on behalf of the most important peacekeepers in the world for the last century—the men and women of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps.”

Periodically over the years, William F. Buckley Jr. said that the American military should win the Nobel Peace Prize every year: for it was the world’s foremost guarantor of peace.

Another passage from my book (perhaps interesting in light of the events of 2025?):

Many expressed the opinion that the Nobel prize was, in fact, a poisoned chalice for Obama: because it would restrict his freedom of action as American commander-in-chief. For example, how could a peace laureate make, or escalate, war? How could he attack Iran’s nuclear facilities? Did he not have a peace prize—a Norwegian vision—to live up to?

And as it happened,

Obama made a decision about the Afghan War less than two weeks before traveling to Oslo to accept the peace prize: He announced that he was sending 30,000 additional troops to the country, in a “surge” of the kind that Bush had ordered for Iraq (though Obama shrank from making this comparison).

Obama arrived in Oslo on the day itself: December 10. Every year, the Nobel prizes, in Oslo and Stockholm, are given on December 10, the day the testator, Alfred Nobel, died. The incumbent president would receive his medal and diploma, and deliver his lecture.

In my book, I write,

Obama had given his address some serious thought, as the occasion deserved. Some of his words were mere undergraduate reflections on war and peace. But some of his words reached a considerably higher level. One feature of his speech was a defense of American power—the kind of defense not heard at a Nobel ceremony since George C. Marshall received the prize in 1953.

Another American, Martin Luther King, received the prize in 1964. Obama, in his lecture, quoted King’s lecture: “. . . violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: It merely creates new and more complicated ones.” Obama then said,

As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life-work, I am living testimony to the moral force of nonviolence. I know there’s nothing weak—nothing passive, nothing naive—in the lives of Gandhi and King.

You figured there was a “but” coming, and there was:

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism—it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

Obama went on to say,

. . . the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions—not just treaties and declarations—that brought stability to a post–World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest—because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if others’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.

In my book, I comment,

George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan could have said the exact same things—and they did, repeatedly. In fact, such language was the theme music of their presidencies.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for taking this walk down Memory Lane with me today. The fundamental issues—the underlying issues in world affairs—never really change, do they?