Trump Should Win the Nobel Peace Prize – But He Won’t

Many news outlets reported the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday by saying President Donald Trump had missed out (Washington Post, Yahoo, Hindustan Times, Huffington Post), not won (USA Today), fallen short (AP News), lost (Time), etc. There is even a meme doing the rounds about “Trump Wine”. “Made from sour grapes,” the label explains. “This is a full bodied and bitter vintage guaranteed to leave a nasty taste in your mouth for years.”

For the record, the prize was awarded to María Corina Machado for her courageous and sustained opposition to Venezuela’s ruling regime. She is a worthy recipient and Trump called to congratulate her. Given his own attacks on the Venezuelan President, his anger will be partly mollified and he could even back her with practical support. He nonetheless attacked the prize committee and the White House assailed it for putting politics before peace.

He could be in serious contention next year. If his Gaza peace plan has been implemented and holds until next October, he should get it. That he is unlikely to do so is more a reflection on the award and less on Trump.

So he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Meh!

Alfred Nobel’s will stipulates the prize should be awarded to the person who has contributed the most to promote “fraternity between nations… abolition or reduction of standing armies and… holding and promotion of peace congresses”. Over the decades this has expanded progressively to embrace human rights, political dissent, environmentalism, race, gender and other social justice causes. On these grounds, I would have thought the Covid resistance should have been a winner. The emphasis has shifted from outcomes and actual work to advocacy. In honouring President Barack Obama in 2009, just months after he was elected, the Nobel committee embarrassed itself, patronised him and demeaned the prize. His biggest ‘accomplishment’ was who his predecessor as President happened to be: the prize was a one-finger send-off to President George W. Bush.

There have been other strange laureates, including those prone to wage war (Henry Kissinger, 1973), those tainted through association with terrorism (Yasser Arafat, 1994), and those who made contributions to fields beyond peace, such as planting millions of trees. Some laureates were subsequently discovered to have embellished their record and others proved to be flawed champions of the human rights that had won them the treasured accolade. Conversely, Mahatma Gandhi did not get the prize – not for his contributions to the theory and practice of non-violence, nor for his role in toppling the British Raj as the curtain raiser to worldwide decolonisation. The sad reality is how little practical difference the prize has made to the causes it espoused. They bring baubles and honour to the laureates but the prize has lost much of its lustre as far as results go.

Trump was not a serious contender – this year

The nomination processes start in September and nominations close on January 31st. The five-member Norwegian Nobel committee scrutinises the list of candidates and whittles it down between February and October. The prize is announced on or close to October 10th, the date Alfred Nobel died, and the award ceremony is held in Oslo in early December.

The calendar rules out a newly elected president in his first year, with the risible exception of Obama. The period under review was 2024. Trump’s claims to have ended seven wars and boasts of “nobody’s ever done that” are not taken seriously beyond the narrow circle of fervent devotees, sycophantic courtiers and supplicant foreign leaders eager to ingratiate themselves with over-the-top flattery.

Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan falls into three conceptual-cum-chronological parts: today, tomorrow, and the day after. At the time of writing, in a hinge moment in the two-year war, Israel has implemented a ceasefire in Gaza, Hamas has released all 20 remaining living Israeli hostages and Israel has released around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners (today’s agenda). So why are the ‘Ceasefire Now!’ mobs not out on the streets celebrating joyously instead of looking morose and discombobulated? Perhaps they’ve been robbed of the meaning of life?

The second part (tomorrow) requires Hamas demilitarisation, surrender, amnesty, no role in Gaza’s future governance, resumption of aid deliveries, Israeli military pullbacks, a temporary international stabilisation force and a technocratic transitional administration. The third part, the agenda for the day after, calls for the deradicalisation of Gaza, its reconstruction and development, an international Peace Board to oversee implementation of the plan, governance reforms of the Palestinian Authority, and, over the horizon, Palestinian statehood.

There are too many potential pitfalls to rest easy on the prospects for success. Will Hamas commit military and political suicide? How can the call for democracy in Gaza and the West Bank be reconciled with Hamas as the most popular group among Palestinians? Can Israel’s fractious governing coalition survive? Both Hamas and Israel have a long record of agreeing to demands under pressure but sabotaging their implementation at points of vulnerability. The broad Arab support could weaken as difficulties arise. The presence of the internationally toxic Tony Blair on the Peace Board could derail the project. Hamas has reportedly called on all factions to reject Blair’s involvement. Hamas official Basem Naim, while thanking Trump for his positive role in the peace deal,  explained that “Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims and maybe a lot [of] people around the world still remember his [Blair’s] role in causing the killing of thousands or millions of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq”.

It would be a stupendous achievement for all the complicated moving parts to come together in stable equilibrium. What cannot and should not be denied is the breathtaking diplomatic coup already achieved. Only Trump could have pulled this off. The very traits that are so offputting in one context helped him to get here: narcissism; bullying and impatience; bull in a china shop style of diplomacy; indifference to what others think; dislike of wars and love of real estate development; bottomless faith in his own vision, negotiating skills and ability to read others; personal relationships with key players in the region; and credibility as both the ultimate guarantor of Israel’s security and preparedness to use force if obstructed. Israelis trust him, Hamas and Iran fear him.

The combined Israeli-US attacks to degrade Iran’s nuclear capability underlined the credibility of threats of force against recalcitrant opponents. Unilateral Israeli strikes on Hamas leaders in Qatar highlighted to uninvolved Arabs the very real dangers of continued escalation amidst the grim Israeli determination to rid themselves of the terror threat of Hamas once and for all.

The bittersweet irony is that such a deal could have been achieved long ago if Western countries and the international community had eschewed feeble posturing and held fast to five truths. Hamas started the war on October 7th. Hamas was holding kidnapped hostages as negotiating leverage. Hamas was more interested in exploiting the human shields amidst whom it had embedded its fighters to delegitimise the state of Israel than in protecting them. Israel took great pains and accepted higher losses of its own soldiers in efforts to minimise civilian casualties. Hamas should have been the object of a concerted campaign to free the hostages, disarm, surrender and vacate Gaza governance ambitions. How much have ‘morally superior’ governments that preferred to reward mass terrorism and protesters who confused victims and perpetrators added to the sum of human suffering by emboldening Hamas and prolonging the war?

Trump is likely to be overlooked

Russia has sometimes been the object of the Nobel Peace Prize. The mischievous President Vladimir Putin has suggested Trump may be too good for the prize. Trump’s disdain for and hostility to international institutions and assaults on the pillars of the liberal international order would have rubbed Norwegians, among the world’s strongest supporters of rules-based international governance, Net Zero and foreign aid, the wrong way. Brash and public lobbying for the prize, like calling the Norwegian Prime Minister, is counterproductive. The committee is fiercely independent. Nominees are advised against making the nomination public, let alone orchestrating an advocacy campaign. Yet, one laureate is believed to have mobilised his entire government for quiet lobbying behind the scenes and another to have bad-mouthed a leading rival to friendly journalists.

Most crucially, given that Scandinavian character traits tip towards the opposite end of the scale, it’s hard to see the committee overlooking Trump’s loud flaws, vanity, braggadocio and lack of grace and humility. Trump supporters discount his character traits and take his policies and results seriously. Haters cannot get over the flaws to seriously evaluate policies and outcomes. No prizes for guessing which group the Nobel committee is likely to belong to. As is currently fashionable to say when cancelling someone, Trump’s values do not align with those of the committee and the ideals of the prize.

Ramesh Thakur, a former UN assistant secretary-general, is Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University and Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. He is a former Senior Research Fellow at the Toda Peace Institute and editor of The nuclear ban treaty: a transformational reframing of the global nuclear order.