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Just in his first term as president, Obama won “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” But many critics, some supporters and even Obama himself questioned the choice, as he had not yet achieved any significant results for the cause of world peace. “For what?” he recalled asking in his autobiography after learning he was chosen.
Some commentators have argued that the Nobel committee made an “ambitious choice”, seeing the potential in Obama’s hopes for a quieter world, punctuated by his desire to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Obama authorized a wave of American troops in Afghanistan and presided over a vast expansion in the drone strike program. It would also be a few years before most of the US forces in Iraq left.
Kim Dae-jung, 2000
Mr. Kim, who went from dissident, exile, and a prisoner on death row during South Korea’s authoritarian era to become president, received the South Korea Democracy and Human Rights Work Award and in East Asia in general, and for peace and reconciliation with North Korea in particular. ” He embarked on a groundbreaking journey to North Korea, where he met his counterpart, Kim Jong-il, promoting a thaw in relations and supporting the goal of final reunification.
But the two countries remained in a technical state of war and under Kim Jong-il’s son and successor, Kim Jong-un, North Korea developed an arsenal of nuclear weapons and missiles. In some ways, the prospect of peace between the two Koreas seems even more remote, despite the 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 statesmen of Israel 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.
Mr. Rabin, then prime minister, was assassinated in 1995 by an Israeli fanatic who opposed a peace agreement. And since then, efforts to resolve the conflict have repeatedly faltered, punctuated by bouts of violence and bitter recriminations. Doubts about a proposed two-state solution have only intensified in recent years amid threats from Israel to annex the territory in the occupied West Bank.
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