By Tom H. Hastings
Trump was elected twice to be the most powerful person on Earth, president of the USA. His name is on buildings, he runs the Kennedy Center, and he is clearly boss of the other two branches of government.
How can he want more? But he does. He wants a Nobel Peace Prize. Others may fantasize privately from time to time about that coveted award going to someone else, so, as a thought experiment, kindly join me in a compare and contrast exercise, maybe thinking about the prize for 2026:
- Trump bombed Iran’s nuclear facility despite zero proof that Iran has a single nuclear weapon, so Benjamin Netanyahu naturally nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize (he was also nominated by five others, mostly for acts of war).
- Mazin Qumsiyeh, Palestinian scientist and nonviolent activist whose life is dedicated to peace, nonviolence, biodiversity, and healing was nominated this year by Nobel Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire, a key figure in ending the long armed struggle in Northern Ireland. Qumsiyeh has published hundreds of scientific peer-reviewed articles and a book on nonviolent social struggle, founded the Palestine Museum of Natural History, and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University.
- Trump is ordering the summary executions of small boat crews in both the Caribbean and eastern Pacific oceans, and threatening to invade Venezuela despite zero threats from the Venezuelan military. More than 60 members of small boat crews have been killed to date, with zero proof, zero legal process, and zero precedent over the past decades. Nobel peaceworthy?
- Two US elected officials nominated five peace, democracy, human rights, and justice activists, all imprisoned by China:
“We, the undersigned members of the United States Congress, respectfully nominate Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, ethnic Mongol activist Hada, Chinese Protestant pastor Wang Yi, journalist Sophia Huang Xueqin, and entrepreneur and democracy advocate Jimmy Lai to receive the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of their deep commitment to human rights and peace in China. All five of these human rights leaders are arbitrarily detained, serving long sentences for exercising rights guaranteed them by international law.”
- Trump federalized National Guard troops and sent them into US cities against the expressed opposition of governors, mayors, city councils, police chiefs, and citizens of those cities. Suddenly there are US troops with assault long guns on our city streets in what amounts to military occupation of towns like mine–Portland OR– that Trump calls “war-ravaged,” despite, as usual, zero evidence of such bald lies. Peace-prizey?
- How about Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg? She has won the Right Livelihood Award, generally recognized as a critique of the Nobel Peace Prize committee (which has awarded the peace prize to the likes of war architect Henry Kissinger, after all). Thunberg was in fact nominated for the Nobel in 2019 (at age 16) by three Norwegian MPs. She instigated a huge global nonviolent youth climate strike movement, was barked at by Trump repeatedly and she responded with humor and grace. She has gone on to nonviolently participate in dangerous global humanitarian campaigns, such as successive seagoing flotillas with medical aid to Gaza–attacked several times by the Israeli military.
I’ve scratched the surface of a question that, in zombie fashion, keeps reappearing, driven primarily by Trump’s malignant narcissism and overweening greed, a set of traits that are buck-naked obvious to the world by now. Wait for his demand to get a Nobel Peace Prize to come up again and we can all roll our eyes in unison.
Dr. Tom H. Hastings is Coördinator of Conflict Resolution BA/BS degree programs at Portland State University. His views, however, are not those of any institution.