Nobel Peace Prize to Obama Premature

The decision to award the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama, the probable messiah of peace, is good only in the sense that it provides encouragement to one enthusiastic, visionary, and comparatively young political leader. But if Nobel Prizes were to be considered as an international yardstick, this decision would be considered as one that was taken in a hurry, or for some other reasons.

The election of a black or half-white person to the post of President was in itself a big incident in the United States. The son of a black father of Kenyan origin and white American mother, Obama achieved a place for himself in the racially prejudiced US politics after a lot of struggle. But as far as his international achievements on the peace front are concerned, his track record so far has not been very different from that of George W. Bush.

Repeating Bush’s Mistakes
Immediately after Obama came to power, North Korea conducted nuclear test, and Iran has also reached quite close to it. The withdrawal of US troops from Iraq has begun as per pre-decided schedule, but Obama has not played any role in it that is worth distinguishing him. The biggest challenge before him is that of Afghanistan, where the situation appears to be getting more complicated.
In Pakistan, Obama is repeating the mistakes made by Bush with much more enthusiasm. The US aid being given to Pakistan has been tripled, without ensuring that it would not use this amount to carry out terrorist activities in neighboring countries.

Obama's Initiative
A new chapter of Israel-Palestine talks has certainly begun at Obama's initiative, but his helplessness before the powerful US Jewish lobby is so well known that there has not been any scope for hope in these talks, so far. Would it not have been better if the Nobel Peace Prize committee waited for at least some of those great probabilities of Obama to take concrete shape, on the basis of which he has been conferred with the biggest prize of the world.