"Clear-eyed, we can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace"

I read the text of Pres. Obama's acceptance speech in Norway. What struck me the most? Not just his admission that he was probably far less deserving of this award than many others; acknowledging that was surely necessary. More than anything, what stood out for me was Obama's refusal to deny the reality that human conflict will ever be eradicated. This struck me as courageous, considering the venue and circumstances.

This is not to say that I believe the "wars" over which he presides as Commander-in-Chief of the US military meet the criteria of "Just War"; rather, it is to say that, on a theoretical level at least, Obama understands that there has to be a mixture of idealism and realism in pursuit of the most noble of goals, peace among nations and peoples.

The biggest problem facing the international community was addressed directly by the President - the reality that most conflicts, at least in the years since the Second World War, are civil wars, wars within states. Obviously there have been and will be exceptions (most recently the Israeli attack on Lebanon); for the most part, however, national collapse or an internal revolt have been far more destructive of human life than wars between states. Far more protracted, intractable, and difficult to deal with from the perspective of international law, civil strife within states, especially when combined with the overarching idea of the inviolability of national sovereignty, has yet to be untangled successfully.

Consider a couple examples. When the Khmer Rouge regime in Kampuchea created a refugee problem in Vietnam, and the reality of what was happening there became clear (not to mention historical animosity between them), Vietnam invaded, to all sorts of international condemnation, despite the fact that their intervention ended the worst of the horrors of Pol Pot's regime.

Similar reaction met Tanzania's military intervention in Idi Amin's Uganda.

Pres. Obama's Nobel Prize speech may just rank as among the most memorable precisely because of the clarity of vision, and the ready acknowledgment that the unity of peace and justice in the international sphere needs a grounding in the undeniable reality that injustice and violence and conflict are far more complicated issues, and necessitate creative measures to confront, and perhaps even prevent, in the future.