The real reason Trump is unlikely to win the Nobel peace prize

Why Trump’s Nobel ambitions clash with the committee’s political outlook, and why Navi Pillay may help restore the award’s credibility The Nobel Peace Prize has never been a straightforward affair.

For a start, it isn’t awarded by the same institutions responsible for the other Nobel Prizes, but by a committee of five people appointed by the Norwegian Parliament and these five individuals decide who has done the most for world peace, although their understanding of that concept has long been influenced by political considerations.

Controversial decisions are hardly a recent development.

Take Cordell Hull, the former US secretary of state, who received the prize in 1945 for his contribution to establishing the United Nations.

Hull was an accomplished diplomat, but why him? The prize could just as easily have gone to Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who headed Moscow’s delegation at the San Francisco conference, or Andrey Gromyko, who subsequently led it, given the Soviet delegation played an important role in shaping the organization, including provisions intended to prevent another world war.

Yet Hull received the honor because, by then, Washington was already consolidating its influence over Western Europe, and American political preferences were increasingly reflected in international institutions.

Hull himself was hardly beyond controversy and before the war, his attitude towards Nazi Germany wasn’t always what modern admirers might expect.

Indeed, even Adolf Hitler was once nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, although that nomination was a protest rather than a serious endorsement.

Read more ‘Goebbels is applauding’: Israel attacks Nobel committee for honoring Gaza genocide investigator After 1945, the award increasingly reflected Western political priorities as American and British figures became more prominent, while recipients from countries traditionally associated with the prize, including Norway and Switzerland, became less so.

Among those honored elsewhere were anti-apartheid campaigners and political figures whose contributions to peace were considerably more debatable.

Consider Lech Walesa and Mikhail Gorbachev.

Both became international symbols of political transformation, but the consequences of those transformations weren’t universally peaceful as Gorbachev’s weakness contributed to the Soviet collapse, followed by conflicts across the Caucasus and other upheavals.

The withdrawal of Soviet support also helped bring about the eventual collapse of Afghanistan’s secular government.

These developments were celebrated in the West as victories for freedom, even though their human consequences were rather more complicated.