This is no passing whim for Trump, who has long complained about not receiving the Nobel Prize. In June, after he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio facilitated a peace accord between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, Trump took to social media to vent his frustration at not getting the recognition he deserves:
“I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for this, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between India and Pakistan, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between Serbia and Kosovo, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for keeping Peace between Egypt and Ethiopia … and I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for doing the Abraham Accords in the Middle East…. No, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be, but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me!”
Meanwhile, Trump has been lining up endorsements from abroad to bolster his peace credentials. Government leaders from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Gabon, Israel, and Pakistan, seeing a way to ingratiate themselves with the US president, have all made a show of submitting his name to the Nobel committee. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters recently that Trump deserves no less. After all, she claimed, the president “has brokered, on average, about one peace deal or cease-fire per month” since his inauguration in January. “It’s well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Well, why not?
The Nobel Peace Prize is in a different category than its counterparts in the sciences, economics, and literature. Those awards are nearly always bestowed in recognition of undeniable achievement — a chemical discovery that expanded the boundaries of human knowledge, a significant body of writing compiled over many years, a medical breakthrough that has saved countless lives, economic insights that transformed financial markets or government policies.
Before a scientist, an author, or an economist is awarded a Nobel Prize, his or her work has invariably been sifted and weighed and studied and put to the test of time. Its importance has been established, often through years of peer review. As a result, the science, literature, and economics Nobels rarely end up looking foolish or naive. The same can hardly be said of the peace prize, which has been awarded to any number of undeserving villains, phonies, or poseurs.
While the other Nobels are awarded by committees of Swedish scholars and scientists, the peace laureate is chosen by a committee of Norwegian parliamentarians — who, like politicians everywhere, tend to be far more interested in what the headlines will say tomorrow than in what historians will believe 10 or 20 years hence. Unlike their Swedish counterparts, who don’t mind waiting decades to be sure that any award they bestow reflects an unchallenged consensus of lasting achievement, the decisions of the peace prize committee often reflect ideological preferences or the passions of the moment rather than any meaningful contribution to peace.
Ironically, this overt politicization runs counter to Alfred Nobel’s original intent. In his will, the Swedish industrialist stipulated that the Peace Prize should honor the individual or group that had “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Lofty words, but maddeningly vague. What, after all, constitutes “fraternity between nations”? Does campaigning against climate change qualify? Does brokering a cease-fire that soon collapses? The committee has answered those questions with a flexibility bordering on caprice.
The roster of peace laureates includes figures whose contributions to world peace have ranged from ambiguous to nonexistent to counterproductive.
In 1973, the committee gave the prize to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho for negotiating an end to the Vietnam War — a sham accord that paved the way to a brutal conquest and communist tyranny. The 1988 peace prize was awarded to the U.N. Peacekeeping Forces, which later became infamous for committing large-scale sexual abuse of children and for refusing to stop the genocide in Rwanda and mass murder in Srebrenica, Bosnia. In 2002, the prize went to former US president Jimmy Carter, not because of anything he had done to advance peace since leaving the White House 20 years earlier, but as a denunciation of US policy in Iraq. Gunnar Berge, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told reporters the prize was meant to be “a kick in the leg” to then-president George W. Bush.
And when Barack Obama was given the 2009 Nobel peace prize less than 10 months into his presidency, even he acknowledged candidly that he had done nothing to deserve it.
Most appalling of all was the 1994 award to PLO chief Yasser Arafat for signing the Oslo Accord the previous fall. Had the committee been less eager to make a splash, perhaps it would have thought twice before honoring an unrepentant terrorist whose commitment to warfare and bloodshed was undimmed.
Seen in the light of that history, Trump’s candidacy is hardly outlandish. On the contrary: If the Nobel committee could hand the prize to Obama in the hopes that he might eventually deserve it, or honor Kissinger for America’s abandonment of South Vietnam, then bestowing it on Trump for shepherding the Abraham Accords or the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace agreement is hardly a stretch. I say that not as a Trump devotee — I am no more a fan of his than I was of Obama’s — but as a realist about what the Nobel Peace Prize has always been: a political award made for political reasons.
To be fair, not every Nobel Peace Prize has been a travesty. The committee has at times honored men and women whose work has been genuinely humanitarian and inspirational — figures such as Albert Schweitzer, Elie Wiesel, Liu Xiaobo, and Mother Teresa, who were celebrated not for brokering treaties but for embodying moral witness. Such choices are reminders that the peace prize can reflect ideals worth honoring. But they are exceptions that prove the rule: When the committee of Norwegian politicians reaches for statesmen or political causes, the results are usually more polarizing, and often regrettable.
Trump critics ranging from Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, to Jon Stewart, host of “The Weekly Show,” have heaped scorn on the prospect of Trump becoming a Nobel laureate, noting how shamelessly he has been lobbying for it. “Trump Doesn’t Deserve a Nobel Peace Prize,” David Rothkopf fumed in The Daily Beast, “He Needs an Intervention.”
It’s hardly surprising that the thought of a Trump Nobel stirs up such controversy. To his foes, the idea is intolerable because it would confer a moral halo on a man they regard as a bully and a demagogue. For Trump, by contrast, the Nobel represents the ultimate validation — an accolade from the global establishment that would eclipse every denunciation. Small wonder he lobbies so avidly. Yet in that, too, he is hardly unique. Past laureates have angled for the award just as actively (if perhaps somewhat less publicly). Whatever else it may represent, a Nobel Peace Prize is always an ego boost. That is why it is coveted so hungrily — and why often the honor rewards vanity more than virtue.
So really, does it matter if Donald Trump becomes a Nobel peace laureate? The peace prize long ago forfeited any claim to be a reliable measure of who genuinely advanced world peace. It’s not a verdict of history but a snapshot of fashion, shaped by the preferences of five Norwegian politicians eager to make a statement. Once in a while their choice exalts a moral exemplar like Mother Teresa; more often it flatters a cause or rewards a politician whose “achievement” looks far shakier in hindsight. The result is a roll of honor that veers from the saintly to the dubious, from genuinely inspiring to patently absurd.
Which is why it’s futile to get worked up over the Trump boomlet. If Oslo decides to indulge his lobbying and flatter his vanity, it will not mean he deserves the accolade any more than Obama deserved his prize in 2009 or Arafat his in 1994. It will mean only that the Nobel committee has once again done what it so often does: confused politics with principle. Trump’s critics will rage, his admirers will gloat, and history will judge the man by what he actually does, not by what the Norwegians proclaim. In the end, cynicism is the only sensible response to the Nobel Peace Prize.
