The Nobel Hope Prize

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama was more than a little shocking. The idea that someone who had been in office for less than 9 months with no foreign policy accomplishment, other than a few speeches apologizing for his own country, would be considered worthy of such an award is quite a head-scratcher. There are many very worthy people who have worked tirelessly and who have suffered at the hands of brutal tyrants who are much more deserving.

Although an American won the award it was not a victory for America. As this WSJ editorial explains, it is Obama's apparent rejection of American exceptionalism that was most persuasive to the committee.

[T]he Nobel citation declares that Mr. Obama's "diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population." Now, the world is a big place, much of it run by despots and crooks, each of whom gets the same vote in the U.N. General Assembly as America. The Europeans are applauding that at long last there is an American President willing to let himself and his country mingle as equals with this amorphous global "majority."

The Norwegians are on to something. In a mere nine months, the President has promulgated a vision for the U.S. role in the world that breaks with both Republican and Democratic predecessors. Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton's Secretary of State, called America the "indispensable nation" a decade ago. Ronald Reagan called it a "city on the Hill," an example to the world.

Mr. Obama sees the U.S. differently, as weaker than it was and the rest of the planet as stronger, and so he calls for a humbler America, at best a first among equals, working primarily through the U.N. The world's challenges, he emphasized yesterday, "can't be met by any one leader or any one nation." What this suggests to us—and to the Norwegians—is the end of what has been called "American exceptionalism." This is the view that U.S. values have universal application and should be promoted without apology, and defended with military force when necessary.

Put in this context, we wonder if most Americans will count this peace-of-the-future prize as a compliment.

The award says not as much about President Obama as it does about the Nobel committee itself. It merely confirms that the committee believes that a weaker America serves the interests of peace. This is a very dangerous notion.

The world is a big and dangerous place. There are many nations in which the most ruthless and charismatic are able to steal, intimidate and murder their way to the top. And many of these "leaders" have aspirations beyond the borders of their own countries. The United States is the only nation that is morally and militarily capable of controlling, deterring and defeating these regimes. The weakening of the US does not bode well for either our nation or for the rest of the world.