Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) -- It’s ludicrous that President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, for which he was nominated less than two weeks after taking office.

You have to wonder if this nonsense inaugurates a new era for the Nobel prizes, one in which words trump deeds and intentions outrank actions. Giving the new U.S. president this prestigious award is like handing the best picture Oscar to an unfinished movie or presenting a gold medal to Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt after he’s taken only a couple of steps in a race.

We human beings must be filled with great despair. We are so desperate for a new global order -- especially after Sept. 11, the Iraq War and the financial crisis -- that we cling to hope and lavish praise on aspirations for peace.

Alfred Bernhard Nobel’s wishes, outlined in his will, couldn’t be clearer. He set aside funds to be “annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.”

Obama was sworn in on Jan. 20. The Nobel nomination deadline was a scant 12 days later, on Feb. 1. As far as I know, Obama was still a presidential candidate during at least part of “the preceding year.” Did his election campaign bestow that much good upon humanity? Hardly. In fact, political campaigns can get pretty ugly. Now we know the same can be said of the Nobel Prizes.

Playing Politics

The peace award isn’t handled like the other Nobel prizes. It is decided in Norway, whereas the awards for economics, literature and so on are made in Sweden. And while the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences chooses the five-member committees that select Nobel winners in physics, chemistry and economics, the peace laureate is picked by a committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament. That explains why the peace award has been the most controversial of the Nobel prizes.

Choosing Obama had to be a purely political decision. Otherwise, it makes no sense. Nobel’s will says the peace award must be given “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Clearly, Obama doesn’t meet the requirements. With fewer than nine months in office, he hasn’t done nearly enough to say he’s done more and better work to promote peace than anyone else.

Unfulfilled Promises

Obama has yet to fulfill his promises relating to global peace such as closing Guantanamo Bay, withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, improving conditions in Afghanistan or prosecuting those who tortured enemy combatants. He’s already increased U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan, and he may increase the military headcount there by tens of thousands.

It’s hard to believe all of the other 204 people nominated for the prize accomplished less for world peace than Obama did. If so, the world is in much worse shape than I thought.

Consider Zimbabwe’s prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, for example, who struggled for years to end president Robert Mugabe’s menacing dictatorship. Or look at Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba, who has dedicated herself to finding a peaceful solution to the almost five-decade-long conflict between the country’s government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces, known as FARC.

Obama could have followed the example of North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho. After being informed that he’d won the 1973 Peace Prize jointly with then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, for bringing about a cease-fire in the Vietnam War and a withdrawal of U.S. forces, Tho refused to accept the honor. His rationale was simple: there was still no peace agreement.

Obama, on the other hand, had no such qualms and gratefully accepted his $1.4 million prize, which a spokesman said will be given to charity.

‘Deeply Humbled’

Acknowledging his shortcomings, though, Obama declared he was “surprised and deeply humbled” by the decision. “I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations,” he said.

And that’s the only reasonable explanation for the choice. It was a clever solution envisioned by the Nobel committee to constrain the world’s most powerful leader to act in a certain way, putting world peace first. Historically, peace has rarely been the main foreign policy goal of the U.S.

In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt amended the Monroe Doctrine to assert the right of the U.S. to intervene militarily in Latin America to stop the spread of European influence in the region. Two years later, Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In the next 10 years Roosevelt’s Corollary, as it became known, was used to justify U.S. intervention in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Dominican Republic.

Let’s hope Obama won’t dishonor his prize.

(Alexandre Marinis, political economist and founding partner of Mosaico Economia Politica, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Alexandre Marinis in Sao Paulo at amarinis1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 11, 2009 21:00 EDT