9 reasons why Donald Trump won't win the Nobel Peace Prize (unless committee abandons its values)
Donald Trump thinks he should win the Nobel Peace Prize, but he also knows that he won’t
According to Donald Trump, “everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize”. After all, he “deserves” it, having personally ended seven wars and with an eighth, in Gaza, apparently in sight if Hamas and Israel agree. “I am asking everyone to MOVE FAST,” he wrote on social media on Sunday.
So the US President may seem like a shoo-in. Which other nominee could plausibly make such astonishing claims? His problem, however, is that the Norwegian Nobel committee, apart from possibly questioning some of his self-declared achievements, will undoubtedly feel the heavy hand of history upon them.
Many previous awards have been made that are entirely at odds with Trump’s ‘values’, statements and actions. And the committee would have a tough time explaining to past winners why they decided to induct him into such exalted company.
READ MORE: How Donald Trump is pushing a right-wing version of cancel culture on his country – and ours
1, sexual misconduct claims
People like Baroness Bertha von Suttner – who in 1905 became the first woman to receive the Peace Prize, having written the influential anti-war novel Lay Down Your Arms and helped lead the international peace movement – and Mother Teresa, known as the “Saint in the Gutter” for her work with poor people and orphans in India, who won in 1979.
What would these formidable women have made of Trump, who once claimed he would “just start kissing” women “and when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything... grab them by the p***y...”? Trump later said his remarks were "locker-room banter", but a jury found he sexually abused writer E Jean Carroll in a New York department store in the 1990s and about 20 women have made allegations of sexual misconduct against him. He denies all wrongdoing.
2, Trump’s refugee problem
However, that’s far from Trump’s only problem. The Peace Prize has a long track record of recognising those who help refugees. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has won it twice and its predecessor, the Nansen International Office for Refugees, which issued the famous ‘Nansen passports’ to refugees fleeing Russia and Armenia, won in 1938.
Trump has made comments about migrants which have been compared to those used by white supremacists, such as “they’re not humans, they’re animals” and “they’re poisoning the blood of our country”. Unsurprisingly, his administration is reportedly “preparing to set a refugee admissions cap at 7,500 people” – down from 125,000 – with priority being given to white Afrikaners from South Africa.
3, dislike of international organisations
Unlike the Peace Prize, he appears to hold international institutions in contempt, withdrawing the US from the World Health Organisation and Unicef. Speaking at the United Nations recently, he asked disparagingly, “what is the purpose of the United Nations?” and suggested it did very little.
In 1919, the then US President Woodrow Wilson received the Peace Prize “for his role as founder of the League of Nations” and, in 2001, the award was given to the United Nations and its then secretary-general Kofi Annan for “their work for a better organised and more peaceful world”.
4, climate change denial
In that same UN speech, Trump claimed, ridiculously, that climate change is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”. Whether the decision to award the 2007 Peace Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former US Vice President Al Gore for their work on the problem makes the committee participants in this act of deception, in Trump’s eyes, only he would know.
As the Peace Prize’s website notes, the IPCC has warned climate change may increase the risk of war by putting natural resources, such as water, under increased pressure and causing large population movements as people try to escape extreme droughts and floods.
5, aid agency shutdown
One of Trump’s first acts was to cancel more than 80 per cent of the US Agency for International Development programmes and the agency itself was closed in July. A report in the Lancet medical journal estimated the cuts could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030.
In stark contrast, the International Committee of the Red Cross has won the Peace Prize three times, while the World Food Programme won it in 2020 for its efforts to “combat hunger, promote peace in conflict-affected areas, and prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict”.
6, EU formed ‘to screw the US’?
Trump and other senior administration politicians can sometimes appear more hostile towards the European Union than they are towards Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine and hostility towards Europe may feel uncomfortably close to home in Norway.
Trump recently claimed the EU was “formed in order to screw the United States, that's the purpose of it”. The EU won the Peace Prize in 2021 for advancing “peace, reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe”. Two very different assessments.
READ MORE: As Donald Trump belittles other countries, Europe must replace US as global beacon of freedom
7, democracy denial
Commitment to democracy is another theme that runs through the Peace Prize. Former US President Jimmy Carter won in 2002 for “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”.
In contrast, Trump falsely claimed he won the 2020 US election, then sat back as his supporters stormed the US Capitol, disrupting but not preventing the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
8, self-praise and 9, premature
Furthermore, the committee is thought not to appreciate being put under political pressure by the nominees, so Trump’s self-praise may backfire. And there may also be a feeling that his peace deals – if he can indeed claim credit for them – have not yet proved to be sufficiently long-lasting to merit an award (Barack Obama’s premature 2009 prize is now widely viewed as a mistake that they may not wish to repeat).
So, all in all, Trump should not win the Peace Prize – if the committee abides by its values. And he seems to know it, saying petulantly: “They’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing.”
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