The recent award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama has raised questions about the motivations of the Prize Committee, a group of five Norwegians.

Some say the award was "political." The implication is that making the award for political purposes means that it was not given for merit. Critics say Obama does not deserve the award because he has been in office less than a year and has not accomplished much in that time.

The Nobel Committee would readily admit that the award is political. When he gave the money for the Peace Prize, Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, wanted it to be political. Nobel was what we would call today a "peace activist."

Nobel said the Peace Prize should go to a person who "shall have done the most or best work for fraternity between nations." He gave the power to grant the award to the Norwegian Storting (parliament), probably because he knew that it then shared his views.

Since the first Peace Prize was awarded in 1901, it has gone to a wide variety of people and organizations, some of them quite obscure. A dozen Americans are among the winners.

Jody Williams got it for campaigning against land mines. Al Gore got it for campaigning against global warming.

Henry Kissinger got it for negotiating the end of the Vietnam War, which he had strongly supported.

Jane Addams got it for promoting peace groups.

Woodrow Wilson got it for proposing the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations, though the United States then refused to join the organization, which ultimately failed.

Jimmy Carter and Theodore Roosevelt got it for negotiating peace agreements as neutral mediators. Apparently, that is what many people see as the appropriate reason for awarding the Peace Prize, though relatively few have been given with that in mind.

In announcing the Peace Prize this year, the Nobel Committee made clear that it thought that Obama had come closer than many other recipients to Alfred Nobel's intentions. "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," it said.

To be sure, this was a political judgment. But so was the award to an anti-Nazi German journalist in 1935 or to environmentalist Gore in 2007. In fact, even the Nobel scientific prizes, awarded in Sweden, were sometimes given to German and Russian dissidents just to tweak the Nazis and Communists.

But why Obama and why so soon after his election?

First, there is the election itself. For the first time in modern history a person of African descent had been chosen to lead a major industrialized nation. Obama surely deserves the credit for that and the message it sent.

His June 2009 speech in Cairo was the first time a leader of the West spoke directly with understanding to Muslims throughout the world. More than any single act since before the Crusades, this was an attempt to bridge a widening and dangerous gap between the West and Islam.

He brought the United States back into full participation in the United Nations. He became the first American president to chair a meeting of the Security Council, which unanimously adopted his resolution on controlling nuclear weapons.

Under his leadership, a sustained effort is now being made to begin Middle East peace talks. For many years, the United States, the only country that can get the parties to the negotiating table, had sat on the sidelines as terrorism raged in the Holy Land.

With help from the Obama administration, Turkey and Armenia established diplomatic relations after a century of conflict. In the past, that alone would have merited the Peace Prize.

He withdrew a provocative plan to place defensive missiles in Eastern Europe and chose a less confrontational and equally effective approach.

He said the United States would talk directly with Iran for the first time in decades, and the initial talks may yield some positive results with respect to Iran's handling of nuclear materials.

Americans risk becoming so focused on the health insurance and economic recovery debates that we lose sight of Obama's effect on the rest of the world. Certainly our media do. They pay more attention to Washington's political smoke and mirrors than to world affairs.

Norway is a small country that may see Obama's effect in the world better than we can. The United States needs to recapture that kind of perspective.

Gordon L. Weil, a weekly columnist for this newspaper, is an author, publisher, consultant and former international organization, U.S. and Maine government official.