Nobel Peace Prize winner - Barack Obama

The Nobel Peace Prize winner I'd like to introduce is Barack Obama. He was once the president of the United States of America. Also, he was different from previous presidents in that he was the first Afircan-American, person of color, and Hawaiian-born president.

Although he was once out-ranked by former First Lady Hillary Clinton in terms of name recognition, his skillful speeches and charisma attracted people, and he gained supporters as he continued to campaign.

While his policies are criticized for lacking specificity and being largely abstract & idealistic, his speeches have been described as the reincarnation of John F. Kennedy for their persuasiveness. In his speeches, he employs a technique of layering short phrases with frequent use of "we" and "you". In particular, two phrases "Change" and ""Yes, we can" were frequently used as catchphrases during the election campaign.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. All media reports cited Obama's diplomacy as a victory for the prize, due to his vision of promoting international cooperation toward nuclear abolition, which he announced in Prague in April 2009, and his call for reconciliation and dialogue with the Islamic world, which he made in Cairo in June.

However, if we see only Obama's diplomatic ideals as the driving force behind his Nobel Prize, we are only seeing half the truth. There is another half which is not clear from the surface. That is the change in the US's security strategy that took place in the 2000s. behind this Nobel Prize lies the foundation of the cold, realistic US's security strategy, which is the globalisation of the use of advanced conventional warheads and the promototion of nuclear non-proliferation. 

Furthermore, Obama's visit to Hiroshima. the first by a sitting US president, was an historic opportunity of great inportance to commemorate the war dead and to revive international momentum toward a world free of nuclear weapons. At the same time, it symbolized the strength of the US - Japan alliance, an "Alliance of Hope", that has been built up over the 70+ years since the end of World War Two.

Posted for Eleanor