The weight of the Ol’ Bloviator’s teaching and writing obligations, not to mention his moonlighting as a windbag-for-hire (who works cheap, if you need one, by the way) continues to keep him cyber-sidelined most of the time just now, but he begs your indulgence as he offers his belated take on the Nobelobamadrama. Ludicrous as it may seem in some ways, Barry O. is far from the weirdest choice the Nobelniks have made. After hall, he was preceded in Oslo by the likes of Henry the K., who bombed his way to the Vietnam peace table in 1973, and then, of course, in 1994 there was the former terrorist Yessir You’reaFart, who reigns unchallenged as the ugliest Nobel laureate ever. Obviously the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to some fairly pugnacious folks over the years and never more so than when it was bestowed on President Theodore Roosevelt (the first American so honored), who was one of the most war-like people who ever traipsed the planet. Oslo came calling after TR stepped in to negotiate a settlement in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Having accused William McKinley of having a “chocolate-éclair backbone” for his reluctance to declare war on Spain in 1898, then assistant secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt pushed vigorously for American intervention against Spain in Cuba on all fronts, encouraging the famed Hearst newspaper syndicate to step up the sensationalist reporting (or fabricating) other wise known as “yellow journalism” that so effectively inflamed American public opinion in favor of war.
Not content to see his country at war, Roosevelt was determined to go mix it up himself. He resigned his post in the Navy Department to raise his own fabled regiment of “Rough Riders,” whose somewhat exaggerated conquest of San Juan Hill emboldened Roosevelt to nominate himself for the Congressional Medal of Honor. Suffice it to say, Roosevelt the Warrior had not suddenly become Roosevelt the Pacifist by 1905. On the contrary, he really would have preferred to allow the combatants in the Russo-Japanese rumble to fight to the last man, or at least, as he put it, “see the war ending with Russia and Japan locked in a clinch, counterweighing one another, and both kept weak by the effort.” His overriding concern in the matter, however, was that the outcome of the war should not be decisive enough to upset the balance of power in Asia and threaten our expanding economic and strategic presence there. In the end, the settlement that TR brokered, or imposed, satisfied neither side, especially not the Japanese, who had gained the upper hand in the conflict and really got their lips all pooched out after the militant mediator failed to secure the reparations payments he had indicated might be forthcoming from Russia. Feeling a bit betrayed, the Japanese came away from the affair harboring deep suspicions of America’s intentions toward them and Asia in general.
Wary of the Japanese, but determined they not get uppity, TR did nothing to alleviate their concerns in 1907 when he ordered four naval squadrons, otherwise known as “the Great White Fleet,” on a two-year, round-the-world cruise, which, oh, by the way, just happened to include a week-long stopover in Yokohama, where school children waving American flags greeted the flotilla. While they professed to be honored by this visit, Japanese leaders knew full well, of course, that what they were witnessing was an elaborately (and expensively) staged example of Roosevelt’s “Big-Stick” (as in “speak softly” and carry one) diplomacy. Fresh from their own recent butt-thrashing of the Russkie Navy, however, the Japanese were not terribly impressed, nor were they disabused of their suspicions of U.S. intentions. TR didn’t live to see it, of course, but these hard feelings would come back to haunt his cousin Franklin early one Sunday morning in 1941.
This is not to blame ol’ TR for World War II or to excuse in any way the buck-naked Japanese aggression that precipitated it. Still, this was certainly one case where a Nobel laureate’s efforts to maintain peace contributed to a long-term outcome where lots of people got shot. Another example came along just fifteen years later when another U.S. president, Woodrow Wilson, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in creating the League of Nations as part of his promise to make World War I the “war to end all wars.” No sooner had the United States finally entered the nearly three-year-old fray against the Germans in 1917 (much to the delight of an aging TR, of course) than Double-W began spoutin’ off about how our Allies (primarily France and Great Britain) were really pursuing a non-punitive “peace without victory,” which he presumed to outline in the famous Fourteen Points, , unilaterally declaring them to be the war aims of all the Allies.
By 1918 all these pledges about “respect for national boundaries” and “self-determination of nations” didn’t sound half-bad to the wobbling but not yet totally whipped Germans (who would later claim that they would never have agreed to an armistice had Wilson not promised them a settlement they could live with happily thereafter.) Unfortunately for poor ol’ Woody, the Brits and Frenchies had been seeing their toes rot off in them trenches and breathing in that raunchy German mustard gas for more than four years by the time peace finally broke out, and they were not about to let any high-minded idealist-come-lately stand between them and making Germany pay out the kerdoodle. Unwilling to trust anyone else with his dream of securing a “League of Nations,” which would have the ostensible means to render any future war all but impossible, Wilson himself led our delegation to the peace conference at Versailles. He was overmatched from the start against the wily Allied diplomats who sensed Woody would agree to just about anything in order to keep his precious League intact. In the long run, instead of the “peace without victory” they had been promised, the Germans were stripped of more than 10 percent of both their population and land area in Europe, plus all of their colonies elsewhere, and saddled with what would eventually add up to a cool $32 billion in reparations payments. You don’t need me to tell you, I’m sure, that the protracted economic suffering that almost inevitably ensued was made to order for a certain whacked-out Austrian corporal, who capitalized on German pain and pride in order to get himself installed as dictator and went on to makes his bones as a tin-horn tyrant by proceeding to grab back all the land and people that the Treaty of Versailles had taken away.
Meanwhile, Wilson who had left everything but the family jewels on the table in Versailles in order to get everybody else at the conference to sign off on his precious League of Nations, would, ironically enough, wind up strangling his own brainchild by refusing to accept the modest amendments to the League charter that were offered by Senate Republicans. Despite its rejection by the United States, the League limped along through the isolationist 1920s and 1930s before showing itself utterly incapable of slowing down, much less stopping the fascist juggernaut fashioned by Hitler and Mussolini. By banking too heavily on the dream that had inspired his Nobel selection, Woodrow Wilson had unwittingly made World War II, if not inevitable, a lot more likely than it might otherwise have been.
Back in the Here and Now, the Nobel folks based their recognition of Oby on his “vision” on issues like nuclear disarmament, climate change, and human rights and “the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of the values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.” The left-leaning Oslo crowd may have thought they were doing Obama a favor by encouraging him to act as if he is president of the world, but if so, they have simply demonstrated once again their total tone-deafness where American politics is concerned. Last I knew, the only place over which the latest Nobel Peace laureate had been elected to preside was the U.S. of By-God A., and things ain’t going so swimmingly over here right now, in case they haven’t noticed. Oby already had a lot of people complaining that he cared more about polishing his image elsewhere than doing his job to the satisfaction of the folks back home; so this may be a case where the Nobel recognition will have to be lived down before it can be lived up to. Beyond that, if they’re giving out awards for admirable intentions instead of solid accomplishments, I think it’s high time I got some credit for my lifelong crusade to stamp out death by natural causes, not to mention my selfless dedication to outlawing taxes on beer. Our president clearly has good intentions, but then so did Woodrow Wilson and even Theodore Roosevelt, in his own way. Good intentions may well be enough to get him to Oslo, but both history and folk wisdom suggest that Oby had best think carefully about where they might take him from there.
