Peace Prize: You're Doing it Wrong
President Obama just won the Nobel Peace Price.
My biggest problem with this?
He has not done anything.
Sure he has talked a lot about what he wants to do, and how the world should be a better place, and how we should all have an open dialogue. And while, granted, that is far far better than that shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach of his predecessor (who managed to drive the US international reputation into the ground, excluding Africa), the fact that he is not W does not grant you a peace prize.
The worst part? The committee even admitted they were awarding it based on Obama's promises and to "kick the previous administration in the leg" or something to that effect.
I dont care how much you hate Bush, how much you believe he screwed up in international relations - just being the next guy does not grant a Nobel Peace Prize, nor does being a socialist college professor, and the two combined still come nowhere close to what should be the requirement for winning.
Which, in my humble opinion, should have something to do with contributing to peace.
Actually, its not just my opinion. Happens to be the opinion of a certain dynamite inventor, who believed and stipulated the award should be given "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses."
Obama's biggest international relations drive so far? Pulling out of Iraq on the brink of creating a stable nation - lets hope it still survives (though it should never have been one country to start with). The other was to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. On top of that he has followed an appeasement strategy with Iran, N. Korea, Venezuela (El Chavismo "Obama is my comrade"), Cuba, and Russia. Anyone who has more than casually glanced at a history book of the 20th century (even a children's book, even a pop up book with nice pictures, even a 1 page long wikipedia article, hell even just getting your knowledge of history from pop culture) would know that appeasing a dictator does NOT equal peace.
I, personally, am worried. I dont think we are living in safe stable world. I also dont think that we are spending out money the right way. Saddam and his regime should have been taken down, but to be perfectly honest it should have been done by a SEAL team or the CIA (speaking of which - who decided that invading a country is more "legitimate" than assassination?). The US military is stretched thin, and this President's solution, his "road to peace" is cutting back further, limiting nuclear weapons, eliminating next generation defense programs. The Afghanistan war needs to be "won" - but I have a damn hard time figuring out what that means anymore. We need to create a stable nation in Iraq, and then leave it to them. But more than all of that, we need to be building and preparing for the 21st century - because there is a very good chance it is not going to be pretty.
I thought the other day about why Europe, historically the center of war after war after war, will never go to war again internally. The answer? They have almost no natural resources, and their non-physical economies are far more important than their physical ones.
When the whole world reaches this point, when it is a global service economy, when "resources" are largely renewable and form only a small portion of the global economy, then we are safe from global war. Then, the incentive to invade, to take by force, will be nullified by the cost disincentives.
But we are not there yet. China is building its military specifically to counter the US military. They are following the strategy of the assassin's mace - cheap counters to our expensive tech. We build the worlds best aircraft-carriers, they build fleets of cheap diesel-electric submarines. They are getting ready to go to war if needed in 10, 20, 30 years. They want Taiwan. They want the Spratly Islands. They have a chip on their shoulder because they were once the biggest, strongest, and most advanced nation on earth but for the all of recent history they have been the poor and downtrodden.
At the same time, Russia is falling ever more towards a command-and-control centralized economy and state and is increasingly direct conflict with Europe and the US. In the case of Russia, I would say it is 99% posturing, but an expansion against former USSR territories is certainly possible (above and beyond Georgia).
You want to keep the world safe through the 21st century? You want to win the Norman Peace Price? You want to prevent massive conflict? Then maintain US hegemony. Build an army of the highest caliber. Modernize our nuclear arsenal. Build a missile shield over the whole damn world and prove that if anyone wants to fight they are going to have to think carefully first.
And again, you know who would agree with me? Alfred Nobel. The man who invented dynamite. The man who took an iron and steel mill and created one of the largest global arms companies. He left his fortune to the prizes, but it was a fortune made through the building better guns and explosives.
We should work to create a peaceful world. And the best way to do that is open and free trade, expand education, increase science and development budgets, increases international collaboration, utilize the most fundamental and most important of all resources, a single individual, in the most logically and globally economic way and then we will see a world which is free of military conflict. Until that time, until the time that we no longer rely on the physical world for our wealth, we need an army. A strong army. We need to disincentivize war (and for that matter, intra-national abuses of power) until the point at which the disincentives become strong enough to be self-sustaining.
My biggest problem with this?
He has not done anything.
Sure he has talked a lot about what he wants to do, and how the world should be a better place, and how we should all have an open dialogue. And while, granted, that is far far better than that shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach of his predecessor (who managed to drive the US international reputation into the ground, excluding Africa), the fact that he is not W does not grant you a peace prize.
The worst part? The committee even admitted they were awarding it based on Obama's promises and to "kick the previous administration in the leg" or something to that effect.
I dont care how much you hate Bush, how much you believe he screwed up in international relations - just being the next guy does not grant a Nobel Peace Prize, nor does being a socialist college professor, and the two combined still come nowhere close to what should be the requirement for winning.
Which, in my humble opinion, should have something to do with contributing to peace.
Actually, its not just my opinion. Happens to be the opinion of a certain dynamite inventor, who believed and stipulated the award should be given "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses."
Obama's biggest international relations drive so far? Pulling out of Iraq on the brink of creating a stable nation - lets hope it still survives (though it should never have been one country to start with). The other was to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. On top of that he has followed an appeasement strategy with Iran, N. Korea, Venezuela (El Chavismo "Obama is my comrade"), Cuba, and Russia. Anyone who has more than casually glanced at a history book of the 20th century (even a children's book, even a pop up book with nice pictures, even a 1 page long wikipedia article, hell even just getting your knowledge of history from pop culture) would know that appeasing a dictator does NOT equal peace.
I, personally, am worried. I dont think we are living in safe stable world. I also dont think that we are spending out money the right way. Saddam and his regime should have been taken down, but to be perfectly honest it should have been done by a SEAL team or the CIA (speaking of which - who decided that invading a country is more "legitimate" than assassination?). The US military is stretched thin, and this President's solution, his "road to peace" is cutting back further, limiting nuclear weapons, eliminating next generation defense programs. The Afghanistan war needs to be "won" - but I have a damn hard time figuring out what that means anymore. We need to create a stable nation in Iraq, and then leave it to them. But more than all of that, we need to be building and preparing for the 21st century - because there is a very good chance it is not going to be pretty.
I thought the other day about why Europe, historically the center of war after war after war, will never go to war again internally. The answer? They have almost no natural resources, and their non-physical economies are far more important than their physical ones.
When the whole world reaches this point, when it is a global service economy, when "resources" are largely renewable and form only a small portion of the global economy, then we are safe from global war. Then, the incentive to invade, to take by force, will be nullified by the cost disincentives.
But we are not there yet. China is building its military specifically to counter the US military. They are following the strategy of the assassin's mace - cheap counters to our expensive tech. We build the worlds best aircraft-carriers, they build fleets of cheap diesel-electric submarines. They are getting ready to go to war if needed in 10, 20, 30 years. They want Taiwan. They want the Spratly Islands. They have a chip on their shoulder because they were once the biggest, strongest, and most advanced nation on earth but for the all of recent history they have been the poor and downtrodden.
At the same time, Russia is falling ever more towards a command-and-control centralized economy and state and is increasingly direct conflict with Europe and the US. In the case of Russia, I would say it is 99% posturing, but an expansion against former USSR territories is certainly possible (above and beyond Georgia).
You want to keep the world safe through the 21st century? You want to win the Norman Peace Price? You want to prevent massive conflict? Then maintain US hegemony. Build an army of the highest caliber. Modernize our nuclear arsenal. Build a missile shield over the whole damn world and prove that if anyone wants to fight they are going to have to think carefully first.
And again, you know who would agree with me? Alfred Nobel. The man who invented dynamite. The man who took an iron and steel mill and created one of the largest global arms companies. He left his fortune to the prizes, but it was a fortune made through the building better guns and explosives.
We should work to create a peaceful world. And the best way to do that is open and free trade, expand education, increase science and development budgets, increases international collaboration, utilize the most fundamental and most important of all resources, a single individual, in the most logically and globally economic way and then we will see a world which is free of military conflict. Until that time, until the time that we no longer rely on the physical world for our wealth, we need an army. A strong army. We need to disincentivize war (and for that matter, intra-national abuses of power) until the point at which the disincentives become strong enough to be self-sustaining.
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