Obama wins Nobel, but for what?

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Price to President Barack Obama landed with a shock on darkened, still-asleep Washington. He won! For what? For one of America's youngest presidents, in office less than nine months – and only for 12 days before the Nobel nomination deadline last February – it was an enormous honor.

The prize seems to be more for Obama's promise than for his performance. Work on the president's ambitious agenda, both at home and abroad, is barely underway, much less finished. He has no standout moment of victory that would seem to warrant a verdict as sweeping as that issued by the Nobel committee.

“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,” the Nobel jury said in making the stunning announcement. The committee attached “special importance to Obama's vision and work for a world without nuclear weapons” and said he had created “a new climate in international politics.”

But what about peace? Obama is running two wars in the Muslim world – in Iraq and Afghanistan – and can't get a climate change bill through his own Congress. His scorecard for the year is largely an "incomplete," if he's being graded. In Afghanistan, Taliban militia spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid condemned the prize. “We have seen no change in his strategy for peace. He has done nothing for peace in Afghanistan.”

He banned torture and other extreme interrogation techniques for terrorists. But he also promised to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a source of much distaste for the United States around the world, a difficult task that now seems headed to miss his own January 2010 deadline.

He said he would end the Iraq war. But he has been slow to bring the troops home and the real end of the U.S. military presence there won't come until at least 2012, and that's only if both the United States and Iraq stick to their current agreement about American troop withdrawals. He has pushed for new efforts to make peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, but he's received little cooperation from the two sides.

He said he wants a nuclear-free world. But it's one thing to telegraph the desire, in a speech in Prague in April, and quite another to unite other nations and U.S. lawmakers behind the web of treaties and agreements needed to make that reality.

He has said battling climate change is a priority. But the United States seems likely to head into crucial international negotiations set for Copenhagen in December with legislation still stalled in Congress.

Poland's anti-communist leader Lech Walesa, who won the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize, said it was too early to reward Obama. “Who, Obama? So fast? Too fast – he hasn't had the time to do anything yet,” Walesa told reporters in Warsaw.

Global prestige:

And what about Obama's global prestige? It seemed to take a big hit last week when he jetted across the Atlantic to lobby for Chicago to get the 2016 Olympics – and was rejected with a last-place finish. Perhaps for the Nobel committee, merely altering the tone out of Washington toward the rest of the world is enough. Obama got much attention for his speech from Cairo reaching out a U.S. hand to the world's Muslims. His remarks at the U.N. General Assembly last month set down new markers for the way the U.S. works with the world. But still...?

The award could be as much about issuing a slap at Obama's predecessor, former President George W. Bush, as about lauding Obama. Bush was reviled by the world for his cowboy diplomacy, Iraq war and snubbing of European priorities like global warming. Remember that the Nobel prize has a long history of being awarded more for the committee's aspirations than for others' accomplishments – for Mideast peace or a better South Africa, for instance.

In those cases, the prize is awarded to encourage those who receive it to see the effort through, sometimes at critical moments. Obama likely understands that his challenges are too steep to resolve – much less honor – after just a few months. "It's not going to be easy," the president often says of the tasks ahead for the United States and the world. The Nobel committee, it seems, had the audacity to hope that he'll eventually produce a record worthy of its prize.

Most of the world leaders said the distinction should be seen as an encouragement for Obama. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who won the prize 1984, said Obama's award shows great things are expected of him in the coming years.

“We do not yet have a peace in the Middle East ... this time it was very clear that they wanted to encourage Obama to move on these issues,” the 2008 Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari, former Finnish president and veteran troubleshooter in international conflicts, told CNN television. U.N.'s nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei, another past Peace Prize winner, said Obama was the most deserving winner.

Until seconds before the award, speculation had focused on a wide variety of candidates besides Obama: Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a Colombian senator, a Chinese dissident and an Afghan woman's rights activist, among others. The Nobel committee received a record 205 nominations for this year's prize, though it was not immediately apparent who nominated Obama.

Compiled from AP and AFP stories by the Daily News staff.