Talk of the triumph of hope over experience. In a breathtaking turn of events, the Nobel Peace Prize, that most politic of prizes, has gone to the 44th president of the United States — Barack Obama. “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention,” said the citation, lauding him for his commitment to multilateral diplomacy. After years of enduring a self-willed, arrogant America, Europe (or at least the five committee members elected by Norway’s parliament) is clearly, desperately grateful for Obama’s preference for “dialogue and negotiation”.

For the rest of the world, Obama’s win is a stunning endorsement of... well, we don’t quite know what. He’s been in office for less than nine months. Even if it’s not a “why him”, it’s definitely a “why now”. The prize is mandated to 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”. This comes at a time when the US is unable to get a grip on its, and the world’s, biggest security challenge, the so-called Af-Pak mess. It is true that, rather than always capping a long career of peacemaking effort, the Nobel committee often wields the peace prize as a hammer to shape events. More often than not, the prize is awarded to encourage winners to see the effort through, sometimes at crucial moments. But in Obama’s case, that glimmer of progress is so faint that few outside the Nobel committee can definitely attest to its existence.

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