Det har vært et privilegium for nordmenn som “nyttige idioter” fra første stund denne mer enn tvilsomme “Fredsprisen”. Det er ikke noe nytt som kom da den ble gitt til Obama. Kissinger og Le Duc Tho i 1973, Menachem Begin og Yasser Arafat i 1976 var vel verre. Og når Kina reagerte såpass kraftig på kombinasjonen av “fredspris” til Obama og Liu Xiabo i 2009/2010 så er det også mot bakgrunn av at den allerede i 1906 ble gitt til den amerikanske presidenten Theodore Roosevelt som forholdt seg til Kina på samme måte som europeiske imperialister gjorde i Afrika.
Han forhandlet frem en fredsløsning mellom Russland og Japan som gjorde slutt på krigen i Manchuria. Men den “løsningen” var basert på USAs “Open Door policy” ovenfor Kina, i realiteten en plan for utplyndring av Kina ved å benytte seg av Japan. Det er også lett å tenke seg hvor historieløse dagens “Vesten” må virke på ledelsen i Kina. Det er som den “vestlige” mentaliteten ikke har endret seg stort siden nettopp den tiden i tiårene før den første verdenskrigen. Det er vel også derfor det heter “nyliberalisme”. Samme mål med bare litt andre midler.
How Teddy Roosevelt Won the Nobel Peace Prize. In February 1904, the Japanese made their move, with a surprise attack on Port Arthur. Thousands of Japanese troops swarmed ashore and, although they failed to capture the fortress, they did surround it and kept it cut off from the rest of the war, as other Japanese troops siezed coastal areas in Manchuria. The Tsar dispatched his Baltic Fleet to the area; both he and the rest of Europe, confident in the superiority of the “white race” over the “Asiatics”, assumed he would quickly crush the Japanese upstarts. Instead, to everyone’s shock, the Imperial Japanese Navy intercepted the Russian Fleet in the Straits of Tsushima in May 1905, and completely destroyed it. But now the Japanese faced a problem. Although they had proven themselves militarily superior to the Russians, Japan did not have the enormous manpower reserves or economy that Russia did, and did not have the necessary resources to carry the war through to the end. So the Japanese Emperor looked for a diplomatic solution through a negotiated peace, and turned to the United States for help, asking President Theodore Roosevelt if he would act as a mediator with the Russians. Roosevelt had his own expansionist reasons for becoming involved. The US had territories in the Pacific, including Hawaii, the Philippines, and Guam, and also had its own commercial interests in China. The Japanese, with their willingness to use military force in the cause of expansionism, had demonstrated that they were now potential rivals, and Roosevelt wanted to limit their territorial expansion as much as possible. So when the US agreed to the Japanese diplomatic request, it had its own agenda in mind. Roosevelt agreed to act as an intermediary only after Japan first agreed to accept the US “Open Door” policy in China.
At the end of the 19th century, eastern Asia was an arena of conflict. The prize was China. The vast country, with its numerous resources and its huge potential commercial market, was far too weak to defend itself from outsiders, and was occupied by a number of Western powers. Germany had control of several Chinese ports; the British held large coastal areas and had fought the Opium Wars to protect its commercial interests. The United States, which had just entered the world stage after beating Spain in the Spanish-American War in 1898, had declared its “Open Door” policy in China (guaranteeing free American access to the Chinese market) to expand its own commercial and military interests in the Pacific.