Does President Obama Deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?

The awarding today of the Nobel Peace Prize to U.S. President Obama raises a simple question: What has he done to deserve it? This question has a very straightforward answer: He has changed the course of a nation, and, in a real sense, the world, for the better.

Within less than nine months as President, Obama has taken America out of the role of loose cannon, rolling about wildly on the deck of the global ship of state, and into the role of a leader among cooperating nations. He has advanced the cause of nuclear disarmament, which has languished for years, even as the threat of nuclear war has hung like the sword of Damocles over the world for nearly two-thirds of a century. (Read an earlier post about nuclear disarmament here.) He has reversed U.S. policy on the use of torture, a policy that had actually promoted terrorism. He has reversed the direction of the United States on global warming, which has the potential to incite war in the long term through its effect on population centers and agriculture.

The function of the Nobel Prize is not merely to reward someone, but to hold that someone up as an example for others to follow. Although some of Obama’s efforts have yet to bear fruit, the mere fact of his undertaking these efforts, and the very real results that have been obtained so far, are a much-needed inspiration for everyone from schoolchildren to statespersons. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama makes his message of hope, and the value of working hard in the cause of peace, that much stronger.

There are those who criticize the Nobel Peace Prize Committee because they have not, in this case, followed the example of the committees regarding awards in the sciences, where Nobel Prizes are awarded years after some achievement. This is a foolish comparison. We are living in a crucial moment of world history, when the potential for catastrophe—nuclear, environmental, biological—is very great. The time to act is now. Consequently, the time for inspiration is now.

It is written that a very small rudder can move a very large ship. The efforts of President Obama, although in some cases still in their early stages, are what the world needs to achieve peace now, on multiple fronts. It is not only that those efforts deserve this award, although they do. However, in addition to that, the people of America and the world need the inspiration to follow the President’s example. Faced with an unprecedented level of challenge and risk, the entire world needs to think, “Yes—we can!” And the world needs to think this now, not twenty years from now.

In the matter of this award, the Nobel Committee, and especially President Barack Obama himself, are On The Mark.

(This post expands on a comment of mine on a news item in The Huffington Post. The original news article is available here. An archive of all my comments on The Huffington Post is available here. Readers are welcome to become what The Huffington Post calls “fans” of mine on HuffPost.)

[The photo of the 1933 Nobel Peace Prize medal awarded to Norman Angell, on exhibit to the public at the Imperial War Museum in London, was taken on August 26, 2005 by Anubis3. The image was obtained through Wikipedia, and is in the public domain in the United States.]

(Copyright 2009 Mark E. Koltko-Rivera. All Rights Reserved.)

Nuclear Disarmament: Yes We Must

As an elementary school student during the 1960s, I and other students across America took part in drills to prepare us to survive a nuclear attack. We dutifully crawled under our desks, to shield us from falling plaster, I guess. Then, on the walk home, I stood at the corner of First Avenue and St. Marks Place in Manhattan, looking to the northeast at the Empire State Building--not even two and a half miles away. It was widely rumored that the Soviets had two 20-megaton hydrogen fusion bombs aimed there. My school desk would not provide much protection against a blast that would vaporize the entire city block on which my school stood. I was stunned to learn, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, that some American political leaders and think tank consultants, such as Herman Kahn, talked about 'winning' a nuclear war, and about 'acceptable' levels of American casualties during a nuclear conflict--casualties in the tens of millions, of which I would undoubtedly be one, along with everyone I knew.

For a total of eight months during 1978-1980, I lived in and near Hiroshima, Japan, where one of the first atomic bombs had been detonated, at the end of World War II. The Hiroshima atomic fission bomb, "Little Boy," was a weak little monster by today's standards, with 'only' a 13-kiloton yield, or the explosive equivalent of 13K tons, or 26 million pounds, of dynamite. (A 20-megaton hydrogen fusion weapon has the explosive equivalent of 20,000K tons, or 40 billion pounds, of dynamite--well over 1,000 times the power of "Little Boy.") Yet, the Hiroshima weapon immolated about 75,000 civilians instantly (with more dying later). At the museum in Hiroshima's Peace Park, I saw artifacts and photos illustrating blast effects. In this city divided by many rivers, photos of bridges showed the permanent "shadows" created by the brilliant blast, shadows left behind by morning commuters, as well as children who had been walking to school on those bridges at 8:15 on the morning of August 6, 1945, when the children and the commuters and everyone else were turned into piles of hot ash. (See photo above; note the outline of the shoes.)

(Yes, I know the received wisdom about the bombing being 'necessary to end the war.' I don't buy it; the historical facts show otherwise. See Howard Zinn's essay about this claim.)

The 1980s saw the publication of books like Carl Sagan's A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, and Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth, which documented how even 'small-scale' nuclear war could bring about global nuclear winter, changing the climate of the planet for generations, ending human civilization. (See also Schell's The Abolition, and his 2007 book, The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger.)

In the 1990s, with the political disintegration of the Soviet Union, I wondered who was taking charge of Soviet nuclear arms. I learned that, for all practical purposes, no one was; nuclear materials were being protected on lonely bases by rusty locks and corruptible guards. Consequently, there is now a lively international black market in nuclear materials and technology.

Yesterday in Prague, President Obama made an observation that should have been obvious since the demise of the Soviet Union: "In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up." He has called for a renewal of American and international efforts toward nuclear disarmament.

I am not a pacifist. However, I have come to understand that the mere existence of nuclear weapons presents a threat to the survival of the entire human race. They must be eliminated from the armories of the nations of the world, and they must be kept from the hands of stateless terrorist forces.

Some say disarmament cannot be accomplished at this late date. I say this is a problem of will, not practicality. We have satellite technology that can read newspaper headlines from space; surely we can find a way to monitor the world for nuclear weapons.

Some say disarmament is weakness. I say it shows the will to survive. We are not the stronger for holding weapons that can destroy humanity; we are only making it more probable that some extremist politician or military officer or terrorist will someday use them.

I do not wish my someday grandchildren to end up as shadows on a bridge. Let us end these weapons now, before they end all of our hopes and dreams. I urge you to contact your federal Senators and Representative to instruct them to follow the President's lead on this matter, including the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Nuclear disarmament is clearly On The Mark.

Reference

Helene Cooper and David E. Sanger. (2009, April 6). Citing rising risk, Obama seeks nuclear arms cuts: Warns of spread of bomb technology in black market. The New York Times [late edition], pp. A1, A8.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Adam Harrison Levy for posting the Hiroshima bridge picture on the site of DesignObserver with his story, "Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs."