Handing Obama the Nobel Peace Prize was a mistake

Former director of the Nobel Institute in Norway, Gail Lundestad, who held the post for 25 years, believes that awarding Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 “in advance”, shortly after his election as US president, was a mistake.

In his book of memoirs, Lundestad notes that this award was planned as an incentive for President Obama’s future accomplishments in world peace.

But the decision taken by the Nobel Committee, as he notes, caused not only a wave of criticism from those who believed that Obama had not yet done anything to receive such a high award, but also surprised even Obama himself.

“Even many of Obama’s supporters were surprised and thought that this was some kind of mistake,” the former committee secretary writes in the book.

And he adds that Obama was not even going to go to Oslo for the award ceremony, and his administration figured out whether it would be possible to avoid a trip to the award ceremony in Oslo. It turned out that this happened only in rare cases - only if the prize was awarded to a dissident who was not let out by the authorities of his own country.

US President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. The Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo announced at the time that the prize was awarded for its efforts to create a world without nuclear weapons and cooperation between people.

Other incidents

Lundestad was influential, but did not participate in the voting on candidates for the post of Secretary of the Nobel Committee from 1990 to 2015.

As the correspondent of the BBC, his book - this is a rare case of discussion of decisions taken by the committee on the nominees of the winners.

For example, Lundestad writes that in 2010, Jonas Gahr Støre, then Foreign Minister of Norway, tried to dissuade the committee from handing the Peace Prize to a Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, claiming that it would harm relations with China. The Nobel Committee then ignored this appeal.

Also, the ex-secretary criticized the appointment of Thorbjørn Jagland as head of the committee, although he had previously been the Prime Minister of Norway.

According to Lundestad, this was not worth it, since the Nobel Committee focuses on its absolute political independence.