WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Barack Obama is scheduled to formally receive his Nobel Peace Prize medal next week, but observers already see the controversial selection as bringing short-term benefits on nonproliferation while leaving the long-term effect uncertain (see GSN, Nov. 2).
(Dec. 1) -
U.S. President Barack Obama, center, speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House last month. It remains uncertain how Obama's receipt of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize will affect his administration's arms control efforts (Dennis Brack/Getty Images).
The award offers international gains to Obama's arms control efforts, experts said, but even supporters caution that it could boomerang against the president domestically.
"To the extent that he pays attention to it, it becomes another way to get hit on the head by the right wing," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security. Still, Albright said he sees the Nobel as "a positive" internationally. "It boosts his credibility around the world."
Obama's Nobel already has sparked hopeful discussions among officials working on nuclear disarmament from European capitals to the halls of the United Nations in New York. Perhaps even more significantly, it is bringing attention to the issue in Main Street America.
"This makes a positive impact on the Obama nonproliferation agenda if only because it highlights for the U.S. audience a recognition of the importance" of the issue, said Jeff Abramson, deputy director of the Arms Control Association.
"There's been a lot of criticism that this wasn't deserved," Abramson added. "I don't think the U.S. public recognized how much other countries do care" about disarmament.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament Robert Grey characterized the award as "frosting on the cake" in intensifying international support for the nuclear disarmament ideals Obama laid out in a Prague speech last spring.
"What the Nobel Prize symbolizes is a tangible, visible sign that people approve of what his administration has been trying to do and, most of all, they welcome the change" from Bush administration policies, Grey said. "It gives an impetus to it and given his popularity, it gives a real chance to move forward on these issues that have been around for 25 [or] 30 years."
In fact, the Nobel could have immediate practical effects for U.S. efforts on issues such as Iran's nuclear program, according to Grey, who also served as U.S. political counselor at the United Nations.
"It makes it easier to get the Russians and Chinese to cooperate on the Iranians," he said. "The positive attitude toward this in Eastern Europe and in the Third World is something that impels the Russians and the Chinese to move forward and be more cooperative than they would otherwise."
For example, Grey noted "the Chinese in particular are very sensitive to where the Third World is going and what their attitude is."
Obama's Nobel boost has been noticed by U.S. officials working on nuclear weapons issue. "It's a spur" toward Obama's disarmament goals, said a high-ranking U.S. official. "It's had its effect at least in the narrow field of nuclear diplomacy."
Several key events in the coming weeks and months will determine whether Obama's nonproliferation program receives an extended Nobel boost. First is the Dec. 5 expiration of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Obama's peace prize "will have zero effect" on the ongoing U.S.-Russian negotiations to replace the pact, argued Russia native and nuclear expert Nikolai Sokov. "Whatever is negotiated there will be done based on national interest," he said.
"I frankly think the Nobel Prize will make him more vulnerable instead," said Sokov, a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. "Imagine the opposition to the new START saying how the treaty is really bad -- negotiated and signed in great haste just to justify the Nobel Prize."
Another issue facing the president is winning Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Obama's Nobel is not seen as having much impact inside the Capitol. "Will it help him on the Hill? Probably not," Grey conceded. While the prize brings attention to the issue of CTBT ratification, Grey noted, Obama needs a "few respectable Republicans" to secure his goal and senators are unlikely to be swayed by the Nobel award.
"I don't think it going to be very relevant to the debate in the Senate," agreed Deepti Choubey, a nonproliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "People are having an allergic reaction to it," and Obama is "downplaying it."
In what now appears to be "a fairly close vote," Choubey said, the administration's aim is to bring "all of the senators up to speed on the progress" made since an unsuccessful 1999 vote on ratification, "that gives us assurance that our arsenal is safe and secure" without testing.
Despite his support for U.S. policy changes under the new administration, Randy Rydell, senior political officer in disarmament affairs at the United Nations, voiced "mixed feelings" about Obama receiving the prize. "The open question is whether the award will serve its intended effect -- or [serve] as a political obstacle for him," said Rydell, who has worked on Capitol Hill.
Internationally, many in the field look toward next spring's Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference as a measure of how the U.S. works with non-nuclear powers. The 2005 conference was seen as a "debacle," ending without any consensus on strategies for strengthening the nonproliferation regime, Rydell said.
Obama has won plaudits not only from the Nobel committee, but also U.N. diplomats for ultimately envisioning a world without nuclear weapons. "The stance that Obama has taken in endorsing the goal unambiguously proves enormous," Rydell said. "The atmosphere is very positive."
However, Obama's reservoir of international goodwill might run dry if there is no arms control progress by the 2010 NPT conference.
"If we go through the NPT review conference and there is no follow-on treaty to START, no CTBT" progress and none toward a fissile material cutoff treaty, "it's going to be pretty messy," Rydell said. "And I don't think any Nobel Prize is going to neutralize" the fallout from a lack of progress.
Yet the final measure of Obama's Nobel will take far longer. "You can only finally know five years down the road," Albright said, when there will be a clearer view of what has or has not been accomplished.
Right now, "people are in a more pointed way asking ... in the world of [U.N.] Security Council resolutions and [International Atomic Energy Agency] pronouncements and just day-to-day down and dirty diplomacy," the high-ranking U.S. official added, "how does that vision translate into real world forward progress?
"There's always a question about how long the Nobel effect will last," the official said. "But it is a reminder [of] the reason that we are all in this business."