Presidents Who Have Won The Nobel Peace Prize

Friday, October 9, 2009 at 10:20 pm

Presidents Who Have Won The Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama, who has pledged to place diplomacy ahead of confrontation and reached out to a skeptical world with offers of mutual understanding, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace today for what the Nobel committee called “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Presidents Who Have Won The Nobel Peace Prize

“I will accept this award as a call to action, a call to all nations to confront the challenges of the 21st century,” Obama said in a White House Rose Garden appearance. “This award must be shared with everyone who strives for justice and dignity.”

Professing humility and surprise in the awarding of the prize, the president said, “I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as a recognition of American leadership. . . .

“To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honored by this prize,” Obama said, suggesting that the prize has not always “been awarded just to honor specific achievements,” but also to lend some momentum to the cause of peace.

Obama is only the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Prize for Peace — President Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906, President Woodrow Wilson in 1919.

The president was nominated for the prize after just weeks in office, with the award after less than nine months into the president’s term a sign that the Norwegian Nobel Committee is recognizing aspirations for peace over achievements.

The committee hailed the president’s creation of “a new climate in international politics.”