Obama would do well to learn from the post-Oslo experiences of two other Presidents
The Nobel Prize Committee’s recent decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama touched off a firestorm across the world. Reactions have ranged from rancor from much from the right wing for the supposed lack of justification, to delight from the American left and international supporters, to widespread confusion and amusement from those who simply didn’t see it coming-including the President himself. In the debate between these camps, the Nobel precedents of two other Presidents have gained new significance. Too often, however, the press simply touches on how Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson “achieved” something to get their Prizes, without evaluation of what exactly Rough Riding Teddy and the dour academic Wilson did.
Teddy Roosevelt, one of the few Nobel Prize winners who can lay claim to having led a cavalry charge in a colonial war, won his peace prize for mediating a dispute between two other colonial powers. Between 1904 and 1905, he oversaw the writing of the Treaty of Portsmouth, a series of diplomatic discussions held in the New Hampshire seaside town. The Japanese had, during this time, done the unthinkable: a supposedly “inferior” Asian country had defeated-indeed, embarrassed-a white power. After their surprise attack on the Russians at Port Arthur and their wholesale annihilation of the Russian Baltic Fleet, which had sailed halfway around the world to meet them, the Japanese had pushed the Russians to the brink of collapse.
Teddy Roosevelt had originally cheered the Japanese victories: despite the racialist ideology of upper class America, the United States and the United Kingdom had cultivated closer ties with the Japanese Empire for much of the late 19th century. Specifically, the United States had hoped that Japanese expansion into Manchuria, the sight of the Russo-Japanese War, could counterbalance Russian designs on carving up the decaying Qing Empire. So Roosevelt watched silently with glee as Moscow’s plans fell to ruin.
But by the beginning of the talks at Portsmouth, both the Japanese and Russians desperately wanted peace. The latter in particular had already faced military collapse and did not want more embarrassment against a non-white people, especially with a growing discontent in the Russian state that would eventually manifest itself in the December Revolution of 1905. But even the Japanese were having massive budgetary problems and did not want the war to drain the state’s treasuries. Afraid that conflict would spill over into the rest of China and devastate the region, Roosevelt had his own reasons for supporting peace. His job in Portsmouth was therefore easy: to negotiate a peace between nations who had every reason to desire it. Winning his 1906 Nobel Peace Prize was, therefore, comparatively easy.
Woodrow Wilson’s Nobel Peace Prize, in contrast, was won under considerable duress. The old, dour son of a preacher man from Virginia was perhaps one of America’s most intelligent and idealistic Presidents. Woodrow Wilson’s progressive internationalism led him to support American entry into World War I in order to “make the world safe for democracy,” as he termed it to Congress. His “Fourteen Points,” a series of idealistic foreign policy paradigms built around new liberal principles of foreign policy, including the creation of a new international body to arbitrate all disputes, the League of Nations, helped prompt the German Empire to begin its surrender in 1918. Eventually, America’s participation in the Great War led him to help negotiate the Treaty of Versailles with the major Allied powers at its close. Wilson hoped to temper the demands of France and the United Kingdom, and with what seemed to be the full force of international public opinion behind him, he proposed a new world order based on international arbitration and egalitarianism in diplomacy. Like the Congress of Vienna a century before, Wilson hoped that this new world order would ensure stability and peace, making the Great War truly “the war to end all wars.”
The trouble was, as it has been for President Obama in the past few weeks, American public opinion had turned significantly against the President and his internationalist efforts. Just as Obama’s Nobel Prize brought him scorn instead of accolades, Wilson’s win in 1919 came during a time of divisive political debate in America. The 1918 midterm elections had brought a significant number of Republican congressmen to the House and Senate who opposed Wilson’s foreign policy goals. Led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, the Senate Republicans pilloried his treaty, objecting to supposed breaches of American sovereignty that it would entail. The disagreement between the Republicans and the obstinate idealist Wilson, who refused to compromise on any part of the Treaty, led its failure in Congress.
Obama could do well to learn from both his predecessors. Critically, the American people are perfectly fine with foreign policy that coheres with American objectives: no one in the United States objected to Roosevelt’s Peace Prize. But Obama should also learn that a multilateralist agenda can lead to a political nightmare if not handled carefully. Obama’s “post-partisan” politics, seemingly neglected throughout the beginning of his administration as the Democrats eschewed Republican input on major domestic policies, should not extend to the international front lest the Republicans launch a similar assault on him there-as they already seem to be prepared to do.
Ultimately, though, the President does not have much to worry about yet: unlike Wilson’s, his Peace Prize wasn’t awarded for committing wholeheartedly to multilateralist goals, but for taking tentative steps toward goals largely in line with U.S. interests-nuclear arms reduction, Middle Eastern peace, and dialogue with ‘rogue’ nations. Still, he should be wary: if he goes too far, he could end up like another Ivy League academic, diplomat, and Democrat, who not quite a century ago gambled his reputation on his idealism and lost. A medal from a Norwegian committee could be but paltry compensation.