2009 Nobel Peace Prize said, "As Americans, we're proud when our president receives an award of that prestigious category". RNC chairman Michael Steele discussed his disapproval of the award in a fund-raising letter, writing, "the Democrats and their international leftist allies want America made subservient to the agenda of global redistribution and control." In 2015, Geir Lundestad, the non-voting Director of the Nobel Institute and secretary for the Nobel Committee at the time of the award, published a memoir, "Secretary of Peace". In it, he wrote "In hindsight, we could say that the argument of giving Obama a helping hand was only partially correct.
Nobel Peace Prize Norway has been able to use the prize as an instrument for nation building and furthering Norway's foreign policy and economic interests. In another 2011 "Aftenposten" opinion article, the grandson of one of Nobel's two brothers, Michael Nobel, also criticised what he believed to be the politicisation of the award, claiming that the Nobel Committee has not always acted in accordance with Nobel's will. Norwegian lawyer Fredrik S. Heffermehl has criticized the management of the Peace Prize. The awards given to Mikhail Gorbachev, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat, Lê Đức Thọ, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, Al