US President Donald Trump has said it would be an “insult” to the United States if he is not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, claiming credit for bringing an end to multiple international conflicts. Speaking to senior American military officers on Tuesday, Trump insisted that the recognition should belong to the country rather than himself.
“Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. They’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing,” he told the audience. “It’d be a big insult to our country, I will tell you that. I don’t want it, I want the country to get it. It should get it, because there’s never been anything like it.”
The Republican president has repeatedly voiced frustration that his predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama, received the honour in 2009. Trump argued that since returning to office in January, he has resolved seven conflicts and could soon add an eighth if his proposed peace plan for Gaza, announced on Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, succeeds.
“We’ll have eight, eight in eight months. That’s pretty good,” he said. Hamas has yet to respond to the plan. Despite Mr Trump’s declarations, experts and the Nobel Committee itself see little chance of his name being announced when the 2025 laureate is revealed on 10 October.
“It’s completely unthinkable,” said Oeivind Stenersen, a historian and co-author of a book on the prize. Kristian Berg Harpviken, secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, stressed that lobbying has no bearing on the selection process. “We do notice that there is a lot of media attention towards particular candidates”. “But that really has no impact on the discussions that are going on in the committee.”
The Trump administration has listed the conflicts it claims to have settled, including disputes between Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan.
