A peace medal for war
THE Nobel committee has been known to spring surprises in choosing winners, particularly of the Peace Prize. This year the world was taken by surprise when it chose a newly elected president -- Barack Obama.
The Committee's justification was even more interesting. We were told that the decision was one, which was motivated more out of hope, of what is expected of the winner, rather than an acknowledgement of what he has done. That the decision had created controversy was acknowledged by Obama himself, and we must thank him for the humility to recognise that there were perhaps others more deserving than he, to whom the honour could have gone. No doubt he was as surprised, as most of us were, to find himself in the company of, according to his own words, "transformative figures" who had won it before him.
One could say that the award is as much reposition of faith and hope on the office of the US president as it is on the person Obama. It could also be said that perhaps no award has come with such a weight of responsibility, where the most powerful public office holder in the world has to constantly strive to justify the award, "to earn it, now that he has got it."
However, it is the substance of a few aspects of his acceptance speech in Oslo, rather than the rationale of the choice, which is the purpose of this article.
To say the least, some portions of the speech did not match the occasion. It was an attempt to justify illegal acts of hostility. The incongruity of the focus of the speech, compared to the sombre occasion in Oslo, was very stark. Quite naturally, when one seeks to validate war and justifies it by restating the contentious concept of "just war" there is bound to be incompatibility in the rhapsodic thoughts expressed by the US president and the actions of the past US governments.
There is, regrettably, an acute mismatch between what the US president preached and what had been practiced by the US governments since the end of the second Great War.
While President Obama accepted his inability to offer a definitive solution to the problems of war, he, nonetheless, reminded us that war remains an arbiter of conflicts and wanted the world to "think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace."
And here is where one finds the realist in the president getting the better of the idealist that he wants us to believe he is. While no nation state can be denied the right to pursue its national interests, problems compound when a proposition (just war) is legalised through subjective characterisation of it. If one country can wage war basing on its understanding of "just," what prevents another state, or a non-state actor for that matter, as we are witnessing now, to resort to the same, on its understanding of the matter? And in any case, can all the preconditions, which Obama suggests should exist before a "just war" can be resorted to, be met?
The US president, while referring to the two wars, (some critics accuse him of forgetting the third, the war on terror) offered no justification for US involvement in Iraq while suggesting that it was drawn in, in the Afghan war. But what one finds very remarkable is his emphasis on the fact that forty-three other countries are a part of this coalition. Large coalition neither validates a strategy nor ensures its success. And, according to experts, this is a coalition of pacifists; more foreign troops fought alongside the United States in Vietnam than are now actually fighting in Afghanistan today.
While President Obama proudly articulates the fact that, "the US has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms" one wonders whether the sacrifice of its soldiers and its citizens have not gone in vain, given that though there has not been a third world war, internal and regional conflicts since the end of the WW II have cost huge in terms of life and resources. As for his concern at the arms race, he seems to have overlooked the fact that the US is at the top of the list of arms vendors in the world.
One would like to ask whether or not the US' stand for democracy and human rights, and the right to free speech and to choose own leaders, which he so eloquently advocates, is actually an ideological pretence and a double speak, which has created a clientele of the most autocratic and tyrannical states in all parts of the world, well-known for suppressing the democratic aspirations, and violating human rights, of their citizens.
If a just peace, which Obama wishes for the world, is to be established, justice and fair play will have to be ensured first. And pursuit of narrow self-interest is an impediment to establishing justice. This the US president must keep in mind.
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