Roger Boyes in Oslo
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President Obama turned the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony today into a professorial address on why and when the United States was prepared to use force. There was, he admitted in the Oslo City Hall, some controversy over granting the ultimate peace accolade to the commander-in-chief of an army that was engaged in two wars.
The audience, a strange hotchpotch of Hollywood celebrities, pale Scandinavian politicians and rural Norwegians in folk costume, shifted uneasily when he talked about the necessity for bloodshed. Although the Nobel prize was established by the inventor of dynamite its laureates try to avoid dwelling on death.
“Some will kill,” Mr Obama said of the US soldiers under his command. “Some will be killed.”
He was intent on using the Nobel speech to discuss the costs of armed conflict and to examine “the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other”.
For all of his initial tension, his unusually uncoordinated movements, Mr Obama ended up more at ease in the City Hall than when he gave his other “meaning of war” speech to West Point cadets earlier this month. On that occasion, he struggled to find the language to persuade future officers that bearing arms in Afghanistan was a good cause. At the Nobel ceremony his task was simpler: to convince his huge television audience that the US was committed to multilateralism, to strengthening the United Nations and to nuclear disarmament; and that this was not a sign of weak resolve. The White House was not being governed by a pro-European patsy.
“It is also incumbent on all of us to insist that nations like Iran and North Korea do not game the system,” he said, making clear that he wanted international co-operation on stricter sanctions. “Those who claim to respect international law cannot avert their eyes when those laws are flouted. Those who care for their own security cannot ignore the danger of an arms race in the Middle East or East Asia.”
Mr Obama was on familiar terrain: in the land of rules. The Nordic audience clearly lapped it up and by the end of the day had almost forgiven him for snubbing King Harald by avoiding the traditional Nobel salmon lunch with the monarch. Wanting to avoid any sign of premature triumphalism, the White House had shrunk a ceremony that normally stretches to three days into a crisp 24 hours.
There is a pre-Christmas coziness to the Peace prize; it is chosen by five former politicians, often befriended, sometimes neighbours. This year the committee was chaired by the former Labour Prime Minister Thorbjøorn Jagland, and four women, the majority of whom had strong leftist credentials and a determination to reward the United States for shedding the legacy of President Bush. That fact that they were considering Mr Obama’s name as early as February was irrelevant. What counted was character, intention, a commitment to dialogue — and a rapid de-Bushisation of transatlantic relations. That was enough for the Nobel judges but it left Mr Obama beached, having to de-code and justify why he had accepted a prize that he had not yet earned.
Hence the truncated visit. A year’s worth of Norwegian social life crammed into a single white-tie banquet. Ms Obama had packed a dancing gown but the word was that there would be no serious waltzing on a day when her husband wanted to demonstrate his commitment to the seriousness of war.
“We can understand that there will be war and still strive for peace,” he said, thus parrying the critics who had pointed to the irony of the peace prize being handed to the architect of a future military surge in Afghanistan. The intellectual core of the speech was dedicated to setting out under what circumstances a war could be considered just, and what had to be done to create a stable rather than illusory peace. It was now essential, he said, to think deeply about the conduct of war. That was why, he said, he had started to close down Guantánamo Bay prison. “We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend,” he said, earning applause and very un-Nobellian whoop from the Hollywood benches.
Kristian Berg Harpviken, the head of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo, told The Times: “There seems to be a reassessment underway as to how wars should be fought.”
Mr Obama seemingly wishes to develop the ideas about humane warfare that were first mooted during the war in Kosovo. “But there are problems,” said Dr Harpviken. “What is left of our protective mission if large numbers of civilians get killed? And is the price of avoiding US troop casualties, the greater exposure of Afghan soldiers?”
Mr Obama frequently referred to civilian losses in his speech, and he stressed that humanitarian intervention remained a justification for force. “Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later.” As he prepared for his Nobel banquet, about 6,000 demonstrators gathered close to the venerable 19th century Grand Hotel taken over by the White House.
What was striking was the fact that war protesters were outnumbered by climate change protesters. That balance might have been the result of watching Mr Obama on one of the large scale screens in the Norwegian capital. Or it might have been the eerie bright shining light that glowed over parts of the country just ahead of his visit. Not a UFO apparently, despite tabloid reporting, but probably a Russian rocket releasing fuel into the atmosphere. Whatever the cause, it seemed to make Norwegians more receptive to a finely tuned lecture on threat and opportunity, on war and peace.
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