Why does Donald Trump want the Nobel Peace Prize so badly? It's his self-image, and Obama, say analysts

[Thiệu Ngô]

Four US presidents have so far got it, and Donald Trump wants it too.

By HT News Desk


The Nobel Peace Prize has come up multiple times — more recently from Trump's own team, often from his MAGA base, and of course from those who want favours, such as leaders of Pakistan and Israel — as Trump seeks a legacy of prestige along with brute power.
“I’m stopping wars. I’m stopping wars. And I hate to see people killed,” Donald Trump said at a dinner hosted for Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu. (Reuters)
“I’m stopping wars. I’m stopping wars. And I hate to see people killed,” Donald Trump said at a dinner hosted for Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu. (Reuters)

The melange of factors also includes a decade-long rivalry with Barack Obama, said an AFP report analysing what it called his obsession.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters last week too: “It's well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

She gave a breakdown of why he is the right pick: Since his January 20 return to power, the US president has “brokered, on average, one peace deal or ceasefire per month”, she said.

She cited the India-Pakistan ceasefire — which came after the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor retaliation — though India has been saying it does not act on foreign cues in domestic or bilateral matters.

Pakistan has nominated Trump for the prize as he hosted its army chief, the de facto boss of the country, for lunch.

India has been more measured with a spokesman saying: “It is better to take this question to the White House.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has also backed Trump for the honour as US weapons fuel the virtual flattening of Gaza.

On the press secretary's list were many other conflicts that Trump claims to have resolved: Cambodia-Thailand, Egypt-Ethiopia, Rwanda-DR Congo, and Serbia-Kosovo, among others.

She mentioned Iran, too, where Trump had ordered strikes against its nuclear facilities, as his contribution to world peace.

Ukraine has not come up, though. Trump had pledged multiple times to end the Russia-Ukraine war on "day one" of his term, which began on January 20.

Trump sees a deal ending the war in Gaza as a step towards the prize, CNN has reported.

“I’m stopping wars. I’m stopping wars. And I hate to see people killed,” Trump reportedly said at a dinner hosted for Netanyahu.

Currying diplomatic goodwill by mentioning the prize is finding many takers. At the White House in July, a journalist asked the presidents of Liberia, Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, and Gabon whether Trump deserved the award, the AFP report noted.

They agreed. Trump said this could go on all day long.

Besides Obama, the US presidents to have got the prize are Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jimmy Carter.
How peace prize process works

Nominations for the prize are usually taken by January 31, but names are not made public; the number is. This time it is 338.
We are close to the announcement, actually: October 10.
Tens of thousands of people, including lawmakers, some professors, former awardees, are eligible to nominate people.
Members of the committee themselves can add nominations too. The five-member committee is appointed by the Norwegian parliament.

Trumps thinks ‘the people know’ anyway

"I deserve it, but they will never give it to me," Trump told reporters in February as he hosted Netanyahu at the White House.

"But the people know, and that's all that matters to me!" he added in a post on Truth Social in June.

An Israeli-American professor of law, Anat Alon-Beck submitted Trump's name to the committee, citing his "strategic brilliance" in securing release of hostages from Gaza.

Garret Martin, a professor of international relations at American University, told AFP that since the beginning of his presidential ambitions 10 years ago, "he has put himself in opposition to Barack Obama, who famously won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009".

Even the prize to Obama sparked debate, and hindsight has led to more voices against it than in favour as the US engaged in several wars during his time in office.

But Trump thinks that, if he were named Obama, he would have “had the Nobel Prize given to me in 10 seconds”. And that was even before he won the election this time.

Voices against the idea have sometimes been as crude as Trump's neediness about it, with history researcher Emma Shortis calling it a case of “a hyena in a dog show”.

Reporter and author Belen Fernandez has argued that “it should go without saying that anyone who positively invokes the nuking of hundreds of thousands of civilians should be categorically ineligible”.

“But in a world in which the supposed pursuit of peace is so often utilised as an excuse for more war, Trump’s nomination might very well be meaningful, indeed,” she further said.