In 2009, then President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee cited “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” attaching “special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”
According to the committee, the award was bestowed based on the tone of President Obama’s new foreign policy.
“Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts,” the Committee wrote. “The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.”
“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” they continued. “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.”
The letter, written on October 9, 2009, concluded that President Obama was “now the world’s leading spokesman” on the “international policy” and “attitudes” the Norwegian Nobel Committee had “sought to stimulate” for 108 years. It ended with the endorsement of “Obama’s appeal that ‘Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.’”
Obama’s award, given just months into the first year of his presidency, certainly raised eyebrows, becoming the target of scorn from critics and widely viewed as a political indictment of the preceding Bush administration.
In addition, despite the Committee’s clear — and arguably partisan — hope that Obama would usher in a new globalist infrastructure of diplomacy, the reality of Obama’s foreign policy was one of war and death. Under his leadership, military action was taken in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen without the authorization of Congress. Not only that, Obama’s drone war resulted in an unacceptable level of civilian casualties, where “nearly 90 percent of the people killed in U.S. airstrikes during one five‐month period were not the intended targets.”
Compare this reality — not the propagandized hero worship promulgated by the Nobel committee — to that of Donald Trump’s foreign policy. In the Middle East alone, unprecedented and historic peace agreements between Israel and multiple Arab states should stand as evidence that Trump — who has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize — should be the unquestionable frontrunner to receive the award.
For decades, most Arab states boycotted the Jewish homeland. Under Trump’s administration, the United Arab Emirates became only the third Arab country to recognize Israel’s very right to exist since its founding in 1948 when they signed the Abraham Accords in August 2020. Bahrain soon followed suit, as did Sudan and Morocco.
In addition — with particular relevance to the Nobel Peace Prize’s stated objective to recognize those who have “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses” – no new conflicts began under Trump.
When we compare the foreign policy legacies of Trump and Obama, the conclusion is clear. Under Obama, despite the avid excitement and adoration he received initially, he left the world in a far more volatile state than when he entered office, with an emboldened Iran standing as a regional superpower and ISIS spreading across the Middle East like a plague. Under Trump, ISIS was largely eradicated, Iran’s influence was scuppered by the general alignment of western and Arab foreign policy, and once-in-a-generation peace agreements were achieved between Israel and countries which — only years earlier — had called for its destruction.
Given the facts, who do you think deserves the Nobel Peace Prize?
Ian Haworth is an Editor and Writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.