Now we know what soft power can yield: a Nobel Peace Prize

Posted By Peter Feaver Friday, October 9, 2009 - 1:42 PM Share

Soft power is the ability to get others to do what you want by getting them to want what you want. President Obama built a larger soft-power asset base in a shorter amount of time than any other president. Yet it was not large enough to get other states to do what Obama wanted in the area of NATO commitments to Afghanistan, receiving released Gitmo detainees, contributing to the Israel-Palestinian peace process, nor, as of last week, granting Chicago the 2016 Olympics. Some of these were harder tests and others easier tests for soft power, but President Obama scored a goose egg on all of them, so much so that he became a punchline.

Until now. A presidency seemingly built around the popularity of the persona of the president has just demonstrated that soft power is not impotent: the Obama team wanted the president to win a Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel Committee wanted to give him one. The only hiccup is that the Obama team wanted it someday and the Nobel Committee decided to give it to him today.

The awarding of this prize is so stunningly premature that even hardened Obamaphiles like David Axelrod could not spin themselves into a measured reaction. Reportedly, his response to the news that the world was stunned by this move was: "As are we."

There is no plausible case that can be made that President Obama has earned this award, not yet. If any of the various initiatives he has launched came to fruition perhaps then he might have a case. If he safely ridded the world of all nuclear weapons, or forged a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians, or thwarted Iranian nuclear ambitions. If he did any of those things, perhaps even Republicans would nominate him for a Peace Prize. But he hasn't done them. All he really has done is give a few speeches expressing a sincere desire to accomplish those.

A Nobel Peace Prize is not just a consequence of soft power. It is also a major soft-power asset itself. So the the asset bubble which was evaporating after last week's "Blame it on Rio" moment has just reinflated. But this has all the feel of a soft power asset bubble built on nothing. When will this bubble burst and what will be the consequences of it?

There is a danger in this for President Obama. As the Saturday Night Live skit demonstrated, his point of vulnerability is the apparent distance between his image on the one hand and his demonstrable record on the other. A premature Nobel Peace Prize makes the Chauncey Gardner parallel almost inescapable.

Bottom line: a Nobel Peace Prize would have been a fabulous capstone achievement for the Obama administration, but it may prove to be a very shaky cornerstone.

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ZATHRAS

2:47 PM ET

October 9, 2009

An Unusual Nobel

The Obama administration would be most unwise to try making a cornerstone or anything like it from President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, but they could make an asset of it.

This Nobel was obviously an expression of the visceral, profound loathing many of America's friends felt for his predecessor. It wasn't just his much-discussed "unilateralism," a consideration probably overemphasized by a mainstream media reluctant to address personalities (or at least hard-pressed to find public figures willing to be quoted directly on the subject).

Let's face it: whatever his other qualities, George W. Bush was spoiled, self-regarding and a bit of a boor. His closest associates learned to accommodate themselves to this, since their positions in his administration depended on their ability to do so; Republicans in Congress genuflected reflexively to Bush as they would to any Republican President right up until the moment they thought this behavior put their own seats at risk. On foreign and particularly European audiences, though, Bush grated. He did not act the way an American President was expected to act -- an expectation created in large part by the three Republican Presidents who preceeded Bush, each of whom had about him a degree of personal grace that Bush distinctly lacked.

It may well be that President Obama would not have been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize this year had there been other obvious candidates; it is of course unusual for the Peace Prize to be given to a President just taking office, whose major achievement to date has been his own election. To use an expression Obama is fond of, though, this award is not primarily about him. It is rather an expression of relief and of hope, by one part of America's international audience, that Obama's predecessor was an aberration in the White House rather than an example of what to expect in the future.

Americans might well hope for the same thing. Indeed, one of Obama's early errors in the White House has been his failure to find ways to remind Americans of how badly Bush let the country down, in so many ways. Franklin Roosevelt exploited Herbert Hoover's unpopularity mercilessly to help sustain his policy program during the Great Depression; Ronald Reagan did the same with the overwhelmed Jimmy Carter during a sharp recession early in Reagan's term. Obama and his associates typically make only indirect, allusive references to Bush, who was as unpopular as any modern President for much longer than any of them. The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Obama provides an opportunity to remind Americans of the main reason they should have confidence in him -- they have experienced the alternative, and the alternative not only left the American economy in ruins but badly damaged America's standing in the world.

Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.