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Jonah Mendoza

Professor Parker

ENGL-1302

25 July 2019

Obama And the Conflicts Between Nations

In 2009, the 44th President, Barack Obama was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize for

his own effort to enhance relations with other nations. After accepting the award, Obama makes

a speech that discusses his own ideas and beliefs regarding the war between different nations

across the globe. Throughout the president’s acceptance speech, he claims that wars are

necessary when it comes a resolve and it reminds the world that we are meant to fight against

oppression and corruption in order to develop a greater effort to create peace. While wars do

create violence, casualties, and conflicts between nations, it’s also not the right answer to make

peace. The reason Obama believes in his ideas of war and peace is because he thinks realistically

that he will have to face the world as it is. He thinks his own nation will continue the fight for

international peace even though he strongly believes that it will happen eventually.

At the time, President Obama was on his first year of presidency when he made that

acceptance speech. He starts off his speech with how he feels about the reward by expressing his

gratitude and then he says that his accomplishments in the beginning are “slight” compared to

the many big names of US history. This introduction of his speech attempts to give an ethical

explanation of his early successes by contrasting his work with others and give more praise to

those who have impacted the US more than he had. Later, Obama transitions from his acceptance

of the award to war by stating that he is the Commander-in-Chief of the US military while they
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are in the middle of 2 wars. When it comes to war, the President believes that the nation’s battles

against threats are one of the reasons that he will have to face through the world as it is. He backs

up his logical claim by looking back at the past events such as the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights which was a document that protected human rights. Obama continues with his

evidence saying that making a promise for peace would be meaningless without protected human

rights. In other words, he believes that discrimination will not bring peace to many nations

around the world. While the 44th president has spoken his reasoning on his views of war and

peace, there are at least some emotional appeal that he tries to capture the audience with in order

for them to believe in more of his political ideas.

Not only does President Obama speaks out his opinions towards war and peace, he also

explains how he manages his war decisions in conflicting situations and his motivations for

waging war.
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Works Cited

"Barack Obama's Nobel Lecture." CommonLit. 17 July 2019

https://www.commonlit.org/en/texts/barack-obama-s-nobel-lecture?search_id=22705597

"How Obama's Nobel Prize speech became a guide to his wartime decision-making." The

Washington Post. WP Company. 16 July 2019

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/obama-legacy/nobel-peace-prize-oslo-

2009-speech.html?noredirect=on