Obama's "aspirational" Nobel - time to work it off.

MOSCOW, December 12 (By Itar-Tass World Service writer Lyudmila
Alexandrova) -- Comments in Russia on the news US President Barack Obama
has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and then on his speech at the
award acceptance ceremony, have been mixed and somewhat curious. Yet, as
many Russian mass media have said, Obama's chance to start working it off
is round the corner.

US President Barack Obama has received the Nobel Peace Prize, which,
according to his own acknowledgement, he does not deserve yet, says the
business daily Kommersant. The ceremony of conferring the Nobel Peace
Prize on Obama was one of the most scandalous over its more than a
century-long history. The decision to give the prize - in the past awarded
to Nelson Mandela and Mother Theresa - to someone who has not yet
accomplished anything special, except for a brilliant election campaign
and beautiful speeches, has invited criticism from many.
All of Obama's accomplishments, achieved during his presidency, are
nowhere near anything worthy of this special decoration, says Vremya
Novostei.
When told at the beginning of October about the results of the voting,
the humble laureate replied that the award was "aspirational" and "a call
for action." And a short while later, on December 2, he made a decision to
send an extra 30,000 troops to Afghanistan.
As it has turned out, says the government-published Rossiskaya Gazeta,
Obama did not dare to commission even the most reliable speechwriters to
think up what he should say in the prize acceptance speech. He authored
the text himself and kept putting the final touches to it during the
trans-Atlantic flight to Oslo. Judging by what the US leader said in the
capacity of the official holder of the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama has
reconciled himself pretty well with his new honorary status and he no
longer feels shy about the award some mass media advised him to abdicate.
A peace prize laureate justifies war, says the daily Gazeta. Obama
devoted his Nobel speech to what he termed as "wars that are sometimes
justified". If he is to be believed, this term fits in perfectly well with
both wars the United States is waging at the moment.
Even inside the Nobel Committee the idea of recognizing the
newly-elected US president as laureate aroused no enthusiasm at first, to
say the least. Of the Committee's five members three originally came out
against.
Russian politicians demonstrated a controversial response to the news
the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize went to the US president.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in the message of greeting to
his US counterpart that the Nobel Committee's decision is evidence of a
realistic vision of world development trends. The Russian president voiced
the hope that "this will serve as an extra incentive to joint work to form
a new climate in world politics and to advance new initiatives,
fundamentally new for global security."
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mikhail Gorbachev declared he was "pleased"
at the news the award was Obama's.
"The things he has done since he became president sounded a very
important message. He gave hope," Gorbachev told Itar-Tass. "In these
troubled days the people who have the power of vision, the determination
and the political will are to be supported."
The first deputy chairman of the State Duma's international affairs
committee, head of the Russian Peace Fund Leonid Slutsky, is quoted by
NEWSru.com as saying that the decision to award the peace prize to Obama
"cannot but arouse a feeling of profound satisfaction among those
politicians and ordinary people who hope for a considerable warming of not
only Russian-US relations, but also for the easing of threats to global
security."
During the Obama presidency his country "set the course firmly towards
conducting a far more peaceful policy and of giving up the previous role
of the world policeman," Slutsky said.
The leader of Russia's Communists, Gennady Zyuganov, said the award
was "a sort of prepaid recompense and evidence of Europe's wish to support
the US president at a time when his rating inside the country has
developed a downtrend."
"It is also a warning to the US president against going to war with
Iran," Zyuganov said. "A Nobel Peace Prize is always given for specific
results. So far I have been able to see no real results of the US
president's professed peace commitments - either in Afghanistan, or in
Iraq."
The leader of Russia's Liberal Democrats, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, claims
that the Nobel Committee made a mistake.
"Obama has accomplished nothing. We have heard only his peace
pronouncements," Zhirinovsky said. He is certain that Nobel peace prizes
should not be awarded to heads of state at all, because it is their job to
work for peace and against wars by virtue of their position.
"In this particular case the decision smacks of groveling,"
Zhirinovsky claims.
"However respectable the new US leader and his political platform can
be, this is a token of recognition his intentions are correct, and not of
what he has accomplished," said the chairman of the State Duma's committee
for international affairs, Konstantin Kosachyov. "The Nobel Committee's
decision is a response to a positive trend, to a positive turn Obama made
in US foreign policy. At the same time the award is to be regarded as a
benchmark. He can prove worthy of it only if he takes certain steps."
Obama is a bold and bright personality, but he got the prize for the
sole reason Europe pins great hopes on him, the periodical quotes Sergei
Karaganov, deputy director of the Institute of Europe under the Russian
Academy of Sciences as saying.
"He has made an attempt to cardinally change the philosophy of US
foreign policy, although there has been nothing but promises so far," the
political scientist said.
Although everybody, including the US president himself, are a little
bit curious what the award is really for, Obama will get a chance to work
it off pretty soon, says Kommersant. A new Russian-US strategic arms
reduction treaty that is to replace the previous one, which expired on
December 5, may be signed on December 18. On that day Obama will arrive in
Europe again, for the conference on climate change in Copenhagen. As the
Kremlin's press-service said on Thursday, Russian President Dmitry
Medvedev will visit Denmark, too.
Sources at the Russian Foreign Ministry have linked the decision
Medvedev will go to Copenhagen on the same day with Obama with progress at
START talks. If this is really so, a new treaty may be inked on December
18.

-0-str