Obama's Nobel Peace Prize: A Defense

By now we have all heard the news,

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it gave the prize to Obama for his "efforts to strengthen international diplomacy," his "vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons" and for inspiring hope and creating "a new climate in international politics." -- from CNN

Now critics have pointed out, validly, that he hasn't actually achieved any results to warrant such an award except possibly a bunch of speeches. I would argue that his speeches and words are the result, and his critics discount too highly the value of words, tone, and communication.

In fact a significant amount of peace is achieved by diplomacy. But what is diplomacy essentially? At it's foundational bases, diplomacy is also just words. Of course they are words arranged in such a way so that when parsed by friends and enemies are meant to achieve some lasting affect on the psychology of those who hear it.

So perhaps a significant end result hasn't been achieved, but to say Obama has not achieved anything is a tremendous understatement. One shouldn't discount the value of the inspiration that was the soul of his campaign. It motivated the constituents of his campaign to act voraciously on his behalf. That motivation helped propelled him to the presidency -- certainly a significant achievement personally, unless you think winning the presidency is easy. His speech in Cairo was widely praised. To have parts of the Muslim world give rousing applause to an American President is a significant step in achieving lasting peace in the middle east as well as home here domestically. One may argue that anyone can do that by pandering to the audience, but if you actually hear it, you will hear criticisms of both Israel and the Muslim world. Pushing against Israeli settlements is also a big step, one can not seem impartial allowing Israel to settle more land in the West Bank. Obama's speech to Europe was also very motivating and cooperative. Once against it wasn't one sided pandering, but a critical acknowledgment of mistakes done by both sides. Of course if you don't agree with these viewpoints, you will discount the value of these speeches, however I think the arguments he has made can be supported heavily.

So yes, no end results, but before we get to the end, we must travel in between. I personally feel Obama has made many strides toward that end of peace, progressing 50% on 4 projects can be more successful than just finishing one project all the way. Mohamed ElBaradei(a former nobel peace prize winner himself) has said that Obama "has done in nine months what many people would take a generation to do."

Perhaps Obama can't compete with previous winners who have certainly achieve significant results toward world peace, but he wasn't competing with them, he was competing against everyone else/organization who hasn't won an award, perhaps the competition wasn't up to par this year? I haven't really read about who the critics would've awarded instead.