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Just in his first term as president, Obama won “because of his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation among peoples.” But many critics, some supporters and even Obama himself questioned the election, since it had not yet achieved any significant results for the cause of world peace. “For what?” he remembered asking in his autobiography when he learned that he had been chosen.
Some commentators said the Nobel committee had made an “aspirational choice,” seeing potential in Obama’s hopes for a calmer world, marked by his desire to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Obama authorized an increase in US troops in Afghanistan and presided over a vast expansion in the drone strike program. It would also be a few more years before most of the US forces in Iraq left.
Kim Dae-jung, 2000
Kim, who went from being a dissident, exile and sentenced to death during South Korea’s authoritarian era to becoming president, received the award for his work to promote “democracy and human rights in South Korea and East Asia in general, and for peace and reconciliation with North Korea in particular. ” He made a pioneering trip to North Korea, where he met with his counterpart, Kim Jong-il, anticipating a thaw in relations and supporting the goal of eventual reunification.
But the two countries have remained in a technical state of war, and under Kim Jong-il’s son and successor Kim Jong-un, North Korea has developed an arsenal of nuclear weapons and missiles. Somehow, the prospect of peace between the two Koreas seems even more remote, despite meetings in recent years between Kim Jong-un and his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in, and with President Trump.
Yasir Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, 1994
The president of the Palestine Liberation Organization and two Israeli statesmen were jointly recognized for “their efforts to create peace in the Middle East”, through the signing of the so-called Oslo Accords aimed at reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis. .
Rabin, then prime minister, was assassinated in 1995 by an Israeli fanatic who opposed a peace deal. And efforts since then to resolve the conflict have repeatedly failed, marked by episodes of violence and bitter recriminations. Doubts about a proposed two-state solution have only intensified in recent years, amid threats from Israel to annex territory in the occupied West Bank.
