The conferment of the Nobel Peace Prize on US President Barack Hussein Obama has been criticized. The Inquirer gave its dissenting view on the award, calling it “premature adulation.” (Inquirer, 10/12/09) For the first time, we disagree with this paper’s editorial.

The adverse comments, local and international, contended that the award was not for a concrete achievement. The Inquirer asserted that a mere “vision” of a nuclear-free world was not enough. Its senior columnist, Amando Doronila, concurred with the Financial Times that such an award was given just for an expression of “aspiration.”

The dissenters missed the whole point. The award was granted not merely for a paradigm shift in US foreign policy, from the myopic unilateralism of George W. Bush to a pragmatic multilateralism of respectful consultation with global partners. The award was made more for the seemingly unbelievable adoption of a foreign policy (Obama doctrine) to make the world free from nuclear weapons! The position was tectonic. It at once solved the stalemated Gordon knot of mutual annihilation of the Cold War, not totally untangled by the demise of Soviet communism in Europe at the end of the last century.

The quest to turn “swords into ploughshares” and prevent nations from rising against nations was embodied in the first known treaty of peace written on clay tablets thousands of years ago at the dawn of civilization in ancient Babylon between the Hittites and its neighboring tribes. That was also the dream of the League of Nations after World War I. The United Nations, after World War II, inscribed that hope at the portals of its headquarters in New York.

The political decision of Obama was unequaled and reckless. That policy was the first and could be the last in this century—if not in history. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee seized the moment. Give the award now to Obama before he be killed by a demented patriot. Alive, Obama has to honor the award.

Before the last US presidential elections, no American believed that a hybrid or black person could really make it to the presidency. After Obama proved this political superstition wrong, the world did not entertain the thought that someone from the nuclear-weapons bloc, not the least an American president, would ever propose the denuclearization of this planet. It would clearly be against the United States’ bigger interests.

For Obama, who wisely did not give the US public any inkling on his nuclear thoughts, the die was cast recently in Cairo. The award is indeed not for a mere “vision” or “aspiration.” The new Obama doctrine is a clear and courageous foreign policy for which Obama knows he might be neutralized by agents of the US military-industrial complex. After all, for lesser “offenses” or mysterious reasons, the Kennedy brothers, John and Robert, were assassinated. Martin Luther King was killed just for dreaming.

—NELSON D. LAVIÑA,
ambassador (Ret.),
nlavina3@fastmail.fm