"By making the prize contingent on intention rather than accomplishment, the prize loses respect"

The prize already lost respect when it was awarded to Yasser Arafat. Indeed..just as a sports trophy is sometimes renamed after a famous recipient...the Nobel Peace Prize should always be referred to as the Yasser Arafat Prize.

For what it's worth, I looked at both the Guardian and Libération (a left-of-center Parisian tabloid) this morning, and most commenters in the forums (fora?) were pretty critical of the decision to award the prize—as am I.

As for Yasser Arafat, I think that that is somewhat different. The Committee has a history of awarding the prize to individuals with blood on their hands when those individuals show the courage to embrace peace, if only momentarily. In addition to Arafat, Kissinger comes to mind. Though I'm sure that the comparison will enrage some, I think that the committee's rationale was similar in both cases.

In Obama's case, I get the sense that there is a genuine sense of discomfort—even indignation—on both sides of the political aisle. By the way, I don't think that academics have been as soft on the Obama administration as this blog has claimed. Much of the administration's mischief has been rather standard "business as usual," and I think many in academia have simply shrugged. This is another matter entirely, especially if you take peace seriously. Some remarkable people were passed over for the Nobel prize in order to award it to a young, as-yet-unaccomplished president.

I dislike this award because it's an A for effort and promise rather than for actual accomplishment. I wouldn't have had a problem with awarding the prize to Arafat if his negotiations with Rabin and Peres had actually led to a substantial and lasting peace, as, for instance, was the case with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. I'd rather see the prize go to a former terrorist like Begin, whose subsequent career leads to actual peace between nations, than to someone like Obama, whose hands are relatively clean and whose career might be quite promising but who has yet to really deliver.

Say what you like about Le Duc Tho, but he was right to refuse the prize on the grounds that peace had yet to be achieved between his country and ours.

I try not to get to worked up over prizes. Ever since I was little and all my favorite punk, goth, and indie bands were ignored by the Grammys, I just kind of learned to suck it up and ignore the whole process.

However, let's be clear about what the Peace Prize is. As often as not, it's a form of public extortion: "Here's the Peace Prize, try not to screw it up." That is to say, it's given with the hope (and demand) that the recipient works for peace. This was the case with Arafat, and I believe it's the case with Obama. This is the Committee's way of trying to shame Obama into ending America's wars and transforming its foreign policy.

So all the people complaining that Obama has not yet accomplished enough need to understand what the award is and what it isn't. Obama should accept it, for to turn it down would seem more hubristic than not (think Sartre - was it? - turning down the Lit award). However, his speech should make it clear that the award will not affect his foreign policy decisions, that he will not be publically shamed or pressured into doing something he thinks is wrong for the nation.

I think the Committee awarded the prize to Obama to give him more clout against his domestic opponents on Health Care, Cap and Trade, the Middle East and the War on Terror. As if Obama could say to his opponents, ‘The European elites agree with me, and so must you.’ What the European elites are too fat-headed to understand is that most US citizens, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum, resent outside influence. In 2004 the fat heads at the Guardian newspaper (UK) tried to influence voters in one Ohio district to vote for John Kerry. They contacted the Ohio voters and made clear to them that unless they voted for Kerry they would be seen by the whole world as backward provincials. The reaction from the voters, even those who supported Kerry, was so hostile that the Guardian editors had to admit it was a bad idea to try to influence US voters. I doubt the Nobel Committee will ever make such an admission. I also doubt their decision will have the impact on US politics that they intended, or hoped for.
That said, I like Erin’s comparison of Obama to a student getting a grade he didn’t deserve from a teacher who had trouble separating hype from substance.

Why would the Nobel Committee care about health care?

But I totally remember Reagan getting the prize for ending the Cold War, and contributing mightily to the dispersion of the USSR and the Berlin Wall coming down. ...Whoops.

There are two ways to look at this, I think. The first is that the Nobel Committee was actually rewarding the American people for (finally) rejecting Bushism and neoconservative foreign policy. Obama, in that sense, accepts the prize on our behalf. Anyone who has been to Europe in the past decade, or has European friends, knows just how mortified our allies were with what they perceived to be the Bush Administration's belligerent, dangerous, and incompetent approach to the world. The Nobel is their way of saying, "Thank you for changing course." (Although if that's their intention, the award truly is premature. So far the only significant differences between Bush's foreign policy performance and Obama's have been rhetorical.)

The other way to look at this is to keep in mind that the Nobel Peace Prize is often awarded as much for promise as for success. The League of Nations withered into irrelevance shortly after Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel for helping to create it. Kissinger's prize was still shiny and new when the Vietnam peace accords collapsed. And obviously, as noted above, Arafat's award was premature as well.

Thus, I'm not sure I agree with the grading analogy. The Nobel Peace Prize is rarely given for completed work. Instead, it often goes to people and organizations that provide hope of a new direction, even if that hope sometimes ends up unrealized.

As for Reagan, he certainly deserves recognition for shaking off his Cold War instincts (and hard core advisors) and working with, rather than against, Mikhail Gorbachev. But it was ultimately Gorbachev who made the tough--and right--decisions as the Iron Curtain fell. The Nobel went to the right man.

Laura,
Don’t know if the Committee cares about US health care reform or not. I do believe the Committee cares very much about the viability of Obama’s presidency, which would be severely compromised if he loses the health care debate. In fact, many Democrats fear that losing the health care debate would turn Obama into a lame duck less than a year into his term. I believe the Committee, as well as Obama supporters everywhere, are worried about this, too. I believe the Committee’s thinking is this: If the Prize helps Obama with this make-or-break domestic issue, or at least keeps him from losing and becoming a lame duck, he will be able to continue to push his anti-Bush foreign policy that the Committee cares about very much. I know this is all a bit convoluted, but I can’t believe the Committee is unaware of the stakes involved in the US health care debate. As I said yesterday, I don’t think the Prize will have any influence, but I also think that the Committee believes it will.

Okay, dossier, you closed the loop for me. Thanks.

Scott, I think Reagan deserves credit for more than "shaking off his cold war instincts". I don't believe Gorbachev would have done the right thing without being forced to it. Remember "Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."? You think Gorb. would have done all of that on his own?

I try so hard to understand how leftists get from point A to point Z, but there just doesn't seem to be any path there that doesn't require me to give up my ability to think.

False dichotomy. Of course Gorbachev couldn't do it all on his own. But Reagan was certainly not the only one helping him, and might not even have been necessary to the result.

Laura,

It was hardly as though Reagan was the first president to call for the dismantling of the Iron Curtain. He simply had the best photo-op. And I very much doubt that Gorbachev factored in the Gipper's Berlin Wall speech when deciding how to respond to the challenges from his Eastern European satellites.

The late 80s didn't have to turn out so well, you know. There's precedent here: Hungary in 1956, Prague in 1968, Gdansk in 1980. Gorby could have sent in the tanks. Brezhnev and Andropov would have. There's no telling, of course, whether an invasion of East Germany, or Poland, or Lithuania would have succeeded (the Soviet Union was weaker in the 80s than before), but such an action would have caused a hell of a mess and put the world at least at the threshold of war.

So, yes, Gorbachev did all that on his own. Despite his loyalty to the USSR, his own political ambitions, and his indifference (if not hostility) toward western-style democracy, he surrendered control of the eastern bloc without firing a shot. He decided--unlike so many of his predecessors--that it simply wasn't worth going to war over.

As for Reagan, as I say, his greatest contribution was the fact that he "got" Gorbachev. While his Cold War advisors were busy warning their boss that Gorby was little more than a user-friendly version of Brezhnev, Reagan recognized that he was the real thing and gave him room to carry out his reforms. Had Reagan listened to his aides, he might have pushed Gorbachev in a different direction or forced his ouster by the Politburo, with incalculable--but possibly disastrous--consequences.

So let's give Reagan the "best supporting actor" Nobel. But Gorby had the lead role.

Scott, your and my understanding differ on this point and no doubt will continue to.

I will agree that, the Nobel evidently being appropriate to such a person as Yassir Arafat, it would not have been appropriate to RR. And we'll have to leave it at that.

Will it be appropriate to Obama, who so far has certainly done nothing more than photo ops? I guess we'll see.

I think Erin's analogy apt and Laura's defense of crediting Reagan's aggressive defense measures (including the proposed missle shield program) with helping tip the balance against continued Soviet oppression of Eastern Europe. Pope John Paul II also played an important inspirational role in encouraging captive peoples to resist their oppressors.

Conversely, I can't agree with Peter Shoemaker's comparison of Arafat's award with Kissinger's. Perhaps this view reflects some Vietnam-era protest ressentiment, when the major news media, many academics and students, and high-profile Hollywood leftists helped succeed in undermining our efforts to defend anti-communist Vietnam.

The Nobel committee has disgraced itself once again in its transparent and tawdry attempt to influence American policy leaders' decisions on domestic and foreign policy by awarding this prize to an utterly unworthy recepient to date.

Hey Drake!

How about you address the substance of a debate for once?

Mavprof,

When Kissinger won the Nobel Prize for peace, it was barely a month after the bloody US-sponsored coup in Chile, which resulted in the death of that country's democratically elected leader. Whether or not you choose to justify the US complicity in that matter in terms of the noble "fight against Communism," the point is that the award was extremely controversial at a time when few on either side of the political divide were inclined to celebrate Kissinger's efforts. And as ScottF points out, the ceasefire collapsed.