Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize brings prestige and pressure

WASHINGTON – President Obama yesterday won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, bringing the relatively novice leader a new measure of prestige on the world stage but also potential complications in carrying out a foreign policy that includes managing two wars.

In making Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee praised the president’s cooperative approach to global issues, a clear rebuke of the Bush administration’s aversion to international organizations and treaties.

The prize comes after Obama has been in office less than nine months, and as he decides whether to send additional combat troops to Afghanistan for a war effort that will now be measured against the principles of the peace prize.

His selection from 205 nominees inflamed U.S. conservatives and drew criticism abroad across a political spectrum ranging from the Afghan insurgents he is fighting to Israeli hawks he is trying to bring to the peace table with Palestinians.

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden a few hours after being awakened with the news at 6 a.m., a “surprised and deeply humbled” Obama said he did not view the prize as an affirmation of his accomplishments.

“To be honest,” he said, “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize – men and women who have inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.”

“I will accept this award as a call to action,” he said, “a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.”

Obama is pushing to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, stop Iran’s uranium-enrichment program, pass legislation to slow global warming, and strengthen international nuclear nonproliferation protocols – all of which require broad international cooperation to succeed.

Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, said he could not think of anyone “more deserving of this honor.”

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh argued that it was an attempt by elites in the world to encourage Obama “to emasculate the United States.”

In some respects, the prize could make Obama’s approach more difficult on issues as diverse as climate change and Afghanistan, where eight years into the war Obama has so far largely failed to secure significant new resources from NATO allies.

“Not only will he be judged in the future against this exacting standard,” said William Galston, a Clinton administration domestic adviser now at the Brookings Institution, “but also it may complicate some decisions, such as the one he must soon make concerning Afghanistan.”

Obama is weighing whether to send as many as 40,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, potentially exposing himself to criticism that he is not living up to the ideals embodied by the peace prize. “While I hope that such considerations will not influence his decisions,” Galston said, “they don’t make his life any easier.”

White House aides disputed the notion that the prize would be a political liability. They said Obama had not been aware he had been nominated and never lobbied for the honor, which carries a $1.4 million cash award.

David Axelrod, a senior adviser, said Obama has told his staff he wants to give the money to charity “in a way that promotes the ideals he is talking about and that that prize committee honored today.”

In announcing Obama as the winner – to gasps of surprise – in the Norwegian capital of Oslo, the Nobel Committee noted that his “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.”

Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said he hoped the prize would add momentum to Obama’s efforts. At the same time, Jagland said the committee – five members appointed by the Norwegian parliament – had not “given the prize for what may happen in the future. We are awarding Obama for what he has done in the past year. And we are hoping this may contribute a little bit for what he is trying to do.”

In his Rose Garden appearance, Obama said that “we have to confront the world as we know it today.” He said he is “the commander in chief of a country that’s responsible for ending a war and working in another theater to confront a ruthless adversary that directly threatens the American people and our allies.”

The breadth of domestic opposition to the choice suggested a resentment that could undermine his ability to carry out some of his most ambitious foreign-policy goals.

In Afghanistan, Obama will probably need Republican congressional support if he decides to send additional combat troops, a move that much of his own party opposes. Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in a statement that “it is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights.”

The two previous sitting U.S. presidents who won the prize did so in their second terms. Theodore Roosevelt won in 1906 for his role in ending the Russo-Japanese war, and Woodrow Wilson won in 1919 for founding the League of Nations and helping frame the post-World War I peace. Jimmy Carter, who as president brokered the Camp David peace accords between Israel and Egypt, won the prize more than two decades after leaving office.

“Certainly from our standpoint, this gives us a sense of momentum – when the United States has accolades tossed its way, rather than shoes,” said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, referring to the December incident in which an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during his final visit to Baghdad.

Obama will travel to Oslo in December to accept the award.