Obamas Nobel Peace Prize: Europe's Peace message to the World

cartoon — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:33:00 GMT

The meaning of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize

Obamas Nobel Peace Prize has a significant meaning. It comes at a moment where we face an urgent decision in Iran, a bad and difficult situation in Iraq and confronting the option of having to send more troops to Afghanistan. As if all these weren’t enough we also have deal with a challenging situation coming from South and Central America. All of these come at the same time we are going thru a very tough economic recession that weakens our position in the world (even if most other countries are in a recession too). Making the appropiate decision in each of the cases that need a solution at this point is frankly very difficult.

A military intervention in Iran will raise considerably oil prices and hence increase world inflation due to smaller oil world supply. It also will create havoc in the Middle East, affect greatly the Chinese economy, benefit the Russian economy and shred some third world economies to pieces making world recession even worse than it is now; all of these events will take place almost simultaneously as inevitable consequences if we were to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. .

The situation in Afghanistan appears to be even more difficult, we do not want another Vietnam but at the same time we can’t afford loosing the war since the future of Pakistan is also at stake. Pakistan has nuclear weapons and it has been our friend for decades it is unthinkable that the country could fall in the wrong hands. However committing more troops aside from the human cost will get us in an ineffable position by engaging ourselves in a never ending war with and endless economic cost.

On the other hand the dollar has gone down in value recently which is terrible news. Robert Fisk a famous war veteran journalist wrote an important article a couple of days ago indicating that some of the largest world oil producing countries were planing to shift from the dollar to gold as the most important means of doing an oil transaction. That article had a negative economic effect in the last few days by weakening the dollar in world financial markets.

We ought to remember that the stimulus plan implemented in order to save the economy from a possible depression caused a huge fiscal deficit, a powerful reason for the dollar’s plight.

The dollar as a world reserve coin is threatened by gold and other world coins such as the Euro. Due to the dollars weakness another world coin or coins could take over the dollars role in the world economy and that could be financially devastating for us. Therefore a decision in Afghanistan has to very carefully evaluate since our further involvement could carry a great financial cost and weaken the dollar and the economy even more.

At present the Republicans are united in favor of increasing troops to Afghanistan and the democrats are divided having important leaders of their party such as Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden against sending more troops. Besides important academic personalities such as Zbigniew Brzezinski an ex- adviser in foreign policy to president Carter and a present close friend and adviser to Obama is also against increasing the amount of troops in that country.

The Nobel Peace Prize to president Obama is a clear message from the Europeans that they are against further wars or militarist interventions in the world. Such message can only be interpreted as backing up Obama in its world peace efforts including not attacking Iran, except thru economic sanctions, and very possibly against raising troops levels in Afghanistan

The Europeans are also telling us that they are in favor of a new world multilateralism meaning that Europe the BRIC ( Brazil Russia India and China) and also Japan, all should share in the worlds decisions making process together with the USA.

We are losing world power at the moment and a clear message from the Europeans is that world power (including decisions that affect the world economy) needs to be restructured and shared by several nations.

By backing up Obama the Europeans are giving him greater power against the hawks in Washington and telling us that at present for what they consider important reasons Europe is in favor of world peace.

A Challenge for Obama

cartoon — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:18:00 GMT

Cartoons : obama challenge

Obamas Nobel Peace Prize: Europe's Peace message to the World

A Challenge for Obama