The initial reaction of David Axelrod, a close aide to US President Barack Obama, on being informed by the media that his boss had just won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 was genuine ?shock?. Obama?s name was not on the list of favourites that usually does the rounds in the lead-up to the Nobel Committee?s decision in Oslo. He entered the fray late in the day but carried the sweepstakes.

Because the Nobel Peace Prize is far more political and contingent upon interpretation of international current affairs than the prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics, sceptics of different hues always contest the wisdom of each year?s choice.

Critics on the Right have fresh ammunition now to portray Obama as a namby-pamby who is being taken for a ride by America?s crafty foes. The gut reaction of conservatives is that he cannot appreciate the merits of realpolitik until one of the many dialogues he is shepherding collapses and makes the US more insecure. Their revulsion at his ?softness? and alleged naivet? will mount with the Nobel laureate tag.

Critics on the Left are blasting the Nobel Committee for felicitating a figure who is resurrecting global capitalism after its scary plunge and refusing to countenance the Goldstone Report on ?crimes against humanity? committed by the Israeli army in the 22-day war on Gaza.

Some in India pooh-pooh the award itself as a plaything of the powers that be since the greatest exponent of nonviolence and peace, Mahatma Gandhi, was denied the honour despite being shortlisted five times.

But ironically, this year?s surprise winner seems the nearest the US has ever gotten to a genuine adherent of Gandhi who is making an honest attempt to heal the country?s centuries-old wounds and restructure its uneasy relations with the world.

British historian Arnold Toynbee argued that ?maybe in the end, the American Negro would take the message of Gandhi to the Western world?. The first manifestation of this prognosis was Martin Luther King Jr, who attempted a spiritual salvation of America from the depths of a ?thing-oriented society?.

By recognising Obama?s contributions to diplomacy and disarmament in his short spell in office, the Nobel Committee seems to have reinforced Toynbee?s oracle that descendants from Africa will redeem the earth from its self-destructive trajectory.

The Committee?s chairman, Thorbjorn Jagland of Norway, admitted that the Peace Prize was being given to Obama with the ?hope (that) this will enhance what he is trying to do?. These were not the words of a besotted European foolishly in love with Obama?s multilateral, cooperative and non-threatening rhetoric. Instead, they revealed a strategic purpose behind the Committee?s pick for this year.

It wanted to make a timely intervention to lock US foreign policy in a virtuous cycle of moderation, compromise and pragmatism, traits which had disappeared in the bullying years of George W Bush.

Obama becomes a Nobel laureate at a crucial juncture, with two major theatres of conflict coming under policy review in Washington DC. The debate over whether the US should pump an additional 40,000 troops into Afghanistan rests heavily on Obama?s shoulders and taunts his own framing of that problem as a ?war of necessity?.

Can a Nobel Peace Prize winner decide in favour of expanding a war that is likely to extend human misery and further militirise Central and South Asia? The Committee has deliberately thrown down the gauntlet like a trap for Obama.

The other major question on which Obama will be hard pressed is the negotiation drama over Iran?s nuclear programme. Hawks within the Obama camp insist that the US should use the weapon of harsher economic sanctions on Iran?s fossil fuels to compel it to eschew its suspected pursuit of the ultimate deterrent. Although Obama went further than expected by launching direct bilateral talks with Iran for the first time since 1979, attempts to steer the course towards sanctions and even pre-emptive war are gaining traction in Washington.

Can a Nobel Peace laureate resort to punitive sanctions and war-like acts if talks with Iran lead nowhere? The Committee, which has calculated the delicacy of the moment well, would hope not.

To be fair, Obama?s foreign policy successes since assuming office speak for themselves and do not need embellishment from any prestigious award. From his bold moves to ?reset? relations with Russia and restart the frozen Middle East peace process to reliving his Columbia University pledge of 1983 to strive for a ?nuclear free world?, the American President has proved that personalities driven by social movements have the agency to shape history.

By taking an open stand against the military coup d?etat in Honduras and relaxing antagonistic positions towards Cuba and Venezuela, Obama went against the entire legacy of US policy towards Latin America. Through his landmark speech in Cairo addressed to the Muslim world and by championing of the cause of Turkey?s admission into the European Union, he initiated a new process of practical reconciliation that was necessary for a relatively weakened and war-wearied America.

Such leaps were risky for Obama as a politician, but he harnessed his charisma and popular appeal to take principled approaches in world affairs that were paradoxically not overly ideological like those of the previous American President who won the Prize in harness, Woodrow Wilson.

Inconsistencies and pitfalls do, of course, mar Obama?s record like any other politician?s. But the Committee?s point in handing him the Peace Prize is to buttress his promising aspects and make him a more steadfast pursuer of the greater good. Rather than presenting the award as a festschrift to a doyen for a lifetime of achievements, it plumped for a young talent so that he could go the full stretch.

?The author is associate professor of world politics at the OP Jindal Global University