265 days of inspiration

Over the last century only three US Presidents have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (the first Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded in 1901).

Theodore Roosevelt won it in 1906, for his work in bringing about various treaties including the 1905 peace treaty between Russia and Japan. He had been President for five years.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson won it in 1919. He founded the League of Nations. He had been president for six years.

Jimmy Carter won it in 2002 (21 years after the end of his presidency) for 'his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development'. He was President from 1977-81.

Just out of interest, here's a look at some of the US Presidents who didn’t win a Nobel Peace Prize:

• Franklin D Roosevelt (President 1933-45), who stewarded the US through the Great Depression and World War II, and who drove the creation of the UN.
• Harry S Truman (President 1945-53), responsible for the Truman Doctrine (containing Communist power in Europe after the war), and the Marshall Plan, which helped stimulate economic recovery in post-war Europe.
• Ronald Reagan (President 1981-89), who sought to achieve 'peace through strength', and who negotiated treaties eliminating intermediate range nuclear missiles from Europe and reducing strategic nuclear arsenals (the INF and START I Treaties).

And now for a brief look at some of the other notable Peace Prize winners this century:

• Martin Luther King, 1964, an 'undaunted champion of peace'.
• Henry Kissinger, 1973, with Le Duc Tho, 'the two chief negotiators who succeeded in arranging the ceasefire between the US and Vietnam after negotiating for nearly four years'.
• Mother Theresa, 1979, 'for work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress in the world'.
• Lech Walesa, 1983, for his 'contribution…of vital importance in the wider campaign to secure the universal freedom to organise'.
• Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, 1994, 'for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East'.
• The UN and Kofi Annan, 2001, 'for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world'.
• Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk, 1993, 'for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa'.
• Mikhail Gorbachev, 1990, 'for his leading role in the peace process which today characterizes important parts of the international community'. He helped end the Cold War.

Heady stuff.

Barack Obama has been President of the United States since 20 January 2009.

265 days.

Photo by Flickr user Jetheriot, used under a Creative Commons license.