Does he deserve it?

It's sensational - Barack Obama, the man who has been steering America's fortunes for less than a year - has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in his first term in office. It places a great degree of trust in the man who has inspired people around the world. But the award isn't a bolt out of the blue. In less than a year, Obama has renewed global faith in America's moral leadership.

He's the politician who shows people the light at the end of the tunnel. His vision includes a nuclear-free world, a peaceful co-existence between Christians and Muslims and a world that treats its natural resources with great care.

Obama has thus brought back into realpolitik a promise of a more peaceful and better world. Obama gives millions of people around the world the feeling that all is not lost for the crisis-riddled planet - whether it's in Africa where his ancestors live in humbling dwellings, or whether it's in the luxurious living rooms of Europe where people had lost complete faith in America under George W. Bush.

Within the few months of his first term, Obama found clear words of respect for Islam in his extraordinary speech in Cairo. He held out an olive branch to Iran and signaled that the conflict about the country's nuclear program could be solved.

He convincingly backed up efforts to revive nuclear disarmament together with Moscow by dropping plans to install a nuclear shield in eastern Europe. And one of Obama's predecessors, Al Gore who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, can rightly see a worthy successor in him because Obama has initiated a shift in US climate and environment policy.

But at the same time the affair has a bad aftertaste. Though the deep respect for this extraordinary man's noble intentions is completely understandable, his actions in relation to his grand words are quite modest. It couldn't be otherwise, given the short amount of time he's been in power.

Even so, Barack Obama has neither solved the escalating nuclear row with Iran nor has he managed to end the war in Afghanistan. The Middle East peace process as well as the strained relationship to nuclear-armed North Korea need new impulses. The same goes for America's relationship with new superpower China.

That's why awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama is less a balanced move than one that's targeted for the future. The recipient is meant to see it as an incentive and a sign of trust. The world needs a bearer of hope like him - more than ever.

Daniel Scheschkewitz is a reporter for DW-RADIO and was previously Deutsche Welle's Washington correspondent (sp)

Editor: Nancy Isenson