My Take | Degraded Nobel Peace Prize standards could mean Trump deserves one
The awarding of the world’s most prestigious prize has been twisted and perverted by politics and often has nothing to do with peace
Given the long-degraded state of the Nobel Peace Prize, I say Donald Trump probably does deserve one, or three. It may also be jointly awarded to the US president’s Israeli partner-in-crime, the suspected war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu with an outstanding arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity issued by the International Criminal Court. Eventually, Netanyahu will have to end his war on the Palestinian civilian population, which ought to make him a peacemaker of sorts.
If Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho could win the Nobel, why not Trump and Netanyahu?
But never mind; Pakistan, Ukraine, and now Israel and a group of African leaders have taken turns to nominate Trump for the big prize, which the US president has openly admitted he covets. Imagine that: the US has been arming Ukraine and Israel to the teeth, and they in turn nominate its president for the peace prize. That’s the kind of world we live in now.
Ok, Ukraine has withdrawn the peace nomination after Washington temporarily halted weapon supplies. You can’t say Kyiv wasn’t being consistent! But now that the weapon pipelines have been restored, perhaps Kyiv should resume the nomination.
Remember how Barack Obama won the 2009 peace prize just for being elected president? That was what everyone had suspected at the time, and it was subsequently confirmed in the autobiography of a former Nobel Institute director, in his own words, to “strengthen the president”.
Compared with the just-elected Obama, Trump actually did some things, though critics can’t agree on what they are or their implications.