Both the Right and the Left in the United States have joined in disbelief at the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama. For the Right, the decision constitutes further proof of Europe’s moral decadence, for the Left, the award seems premature and complicates Obama’s position on the house front. In fact, the award signals a cry for leadership of a global civil society that is fitfully emerging, and which an American president, exactly because of his own country’s power, is best positioned to take on.
What is global civil society? It features an internationalist outlook that transcend individual state interests - encapsulating everything from media outlets like CNN International or the English-language version of Al Jazeera television, to United Nations agencies, and the worldwide movement of non-governmental organizations, or NGOs. It refers to the kind labors of any number of relief charities operating in poor or war-torn countries. It implies, in other words, an altruism that transcends national, religious, and ethnic borders to include humanity as a entire.
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