This morning’s announcement from Oslo:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

obamaObama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the United States is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.

For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world’s leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama’s appeal that “now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.”

The unexpected announcement was met with surprise in the room, at the White House and throughout the world. The Republican National Committee (RNC), Obama’s political opposition, immediately issued a statement critical of the selection:

What has President Obama actually accomplished? It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights.

Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly has a different take:

It’s indicative of a degree of relief. Much of the world has wanted America to take the lead again, and they’re rightly encouraged to see the U.S. president stepping up in the ways they hoped he would. It’s hard to overstate the significance, for example, of seeing a U.S. president chair a meeting of the United Nations Security Council and making strides on a nuclear deal.

This is not to say Obama was honored simply because he’s not Bush. The president really has committed himself to promoting counter-proliferation, reversing policies on torture, embracing a new approach to international engagement, and recommitting the U.S. to the Middle East peace process. But charting a new course for American leadership, breaking with the recent past, no doubt played a role.

I think Benen has is right. The Nobel committee recognized how starved the world has been for leadership on issues of global significance, so much so that even the promise of international cooperation that Obama brings justifies the award.

Andrew Sullivan puts it this way:

Reading through all the reactions… there are two obvious points: this is premature and this is thoroughly deserved.

Both are right. I don’t think Americans fully absorbed the depths to which this country’s reputation had sunk under the Cheney era. That’s understandable. And so they also haven’t fully absorbed the turn-around in the world’s view of America that Obama and the American people have accomplished. Of course, this has yet to bear real fruit. But you can begin to see how it could; and I hope more see both the peaceful intentions and the steely resolve of this man to persevere.

I see this prize as an endorsement of his extraordinary reorientation of world politics, and as an encouragement to see it through…  this is an attempt to tell us: look up for a moment, see how far we’ve come in pivoting away from global conflict, and give this man a break for his efforts and the massive burden he now bears.

As he so often does, Sullivan signs off with, “know hope.”