United States President Donald Trump has led a campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize like never before, and in his pursuit of one of the world's most prestigious honors, he has been extremely outspoken and relentless, even stating that it would be a "great insult" if he did not win it.
But experts are skeptical that such an aggressive lobbying campaign can bear fruit when the Norwegian Nobel Committee awards the prize tomorrow. Reasons range from Trump's own behavior at home and abroad to the fact that the prize is intended to recognize actions from 2024 - when he was elected but not yet in office.
“Putting pressure on the committee, constantly repeating 'I should get the award, I'm a worthy candidate' - that's not a very peaceful approach,” Nina Greger, director of the Oslo Peace Research Institute, told the Financial Times.
Halvard Leira, research director at the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs, added: “There have been campaigns before, but they have been more subtle.” He pointed to South Korea’s “quite sophisticated” effort to award then-President Kim Dae-jung the prize, which happened in 2000.
None of this deters Trump. His approach has been full of exaggerations and public declarations of his own worth.
On September 23, the US President declared before the United Nations General Assembly that he had “saved millions of lives” by ending “seven wars that could not be ended.” Seven days later, on September 30, before American generals and admirals gathered near Washington, Trump made a threatening statement: not electing him, he claimed, would be an “insult” to the United States.
Few in Oslo believe that the five-member committee, which includes a human rights activist, a foreign policy expert and three former ministers, will award the prize to Trump this year. However, the US president could still influence the outcome, as the laureate could be an individual or human rights organization that is not seen as too hostile to the US or Israel.
Even those who have ridiculed some of Trump's recent peace efforts - such as his frequent mixing of Albania and Armenia - say his attempt to end the war in Gaza could be a significant argument in his favor.
“It was hard to take his statements seriously - but this is different. Gaza would be a big deal,” one European diplomat told the FT.
European officials believe Trump is rushing to secure an agreement between Israel and Hamas before the award is announced, in order to try to influence the decision.
In Oslo, the Nobel Committee, which awards the prize, remains tight-lipped, at least in public statements. “Of course, we notice that there is a lot of media interest in certain candidates,” the committee’s secretary, Christian Berg Harpviken, told France’s Le Monde. He stressed that lobbying is nothing new: “This year there are more campaigns – some more sophisticated than others and therefore less visible – and people come to Oslo to give lectures, visit the Nobel Institute or try to meet with committee members in the hope of promoting their candidate.”
In mid-August, Norwegian media reported that the US president had called Norway’s finance minister and former NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg. Officially, the call was about tariffs, but Trump took the opportunity to remark that he would be “a great Nobel laureate.” According to the newspaper Dagens Naringsliv, this was not the first time Trump had raised the topic with Stoltenberg.
Stoltenberg reminded him that the Norwegian government has no influence on the committee members, who work with the support of experts. Their selection is guided by the will of dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896. According to his will, the prize must be awarded to those “who shall have done the most or best to promote fraternity among nations, to the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and to the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
Trump has dismissed this and is using every opportunity to highlight the number of supporters he has. “Everyone says I should win the Nobel Peace Prize for each of these achievements,” he said again on September 23. Indeed, several foreign leaders - aware of the American president's obsession - have claimed to have nominated him. Among them was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who did so on July 7 - even though the deadline for nominations was January 31 at noon, Le Monde reports.
Trump's main sticking point with the committee concerns the 2009 decision to award the prize to his main rival, Barack Obama, for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." The award was given even though Obama had just begun his presidential term after winning the election the previous year, the FT reminds.
"If my name was Obama, I would win the Nobel Prize in 10 seconds," Trump complained last year.
This year, 244 individuals and 94 organizations were nominated. Their identities - as well as the identities of their nominators - will only be revealed in 50 years, “mainly for security reasons,” said Berg Harpviken. He added that the nomination itself is not an achievement: “It is important to be awarded. But I think that trying to plan one’s career or actions with the aim of winning the Nobel Peace Prize usually does not bring success.”
In Norway, experts are almost unanimous in their assessment that Trump's victory is extremely unlikely. "It would require a mental breakdown within the committee," three historians wrote in an article published in the newspaper Aftenposten in mid-August. "His chances have not improved since his speech at the UN," said Sven, one of the authors: "He continues to attack the international order, continues to support Netanyahu in Gaza, and although he verbally supports Ukraine, he has not imposed sanctions on Putin."
Siri As Rustad, research director at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO), shares the same view. She has analyzed the wars that Trump has claimed to have ended: “They were either not wars, or they were not ended, or, in some cases, he partly caused them, indirectly - through American aggression or the insecurity that the United States has created, which contributes to the destabilization of the world.” Even if Trump were to succeed in imposing a ceasefire in Gaza, “one good deed cannot erase everything else, especially what he does in his own country,” she told Le Monde.
As she does every year, Nina Greger listed the candidates she considers most deserving. Her list includes the Committee to Protect Journalists, an American non-governmental organization that has consistently condemned the Trump administration's attacks on press freedom, as well as the Emergency Response Rooms network from Sudan, which became a key player in the country after the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) programs ended. Greger also believes that the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice - both targeted by the US president - could be excellent laureates.
However, the FT notes that Oslo is wary of the possibility of Trump retaliating with tariffs or other measures if he is not announced as the winner on Friday. An additional source of tension is the recent controversy after a Norwegian sovereign wealth fund decided to sell its shares in the US company Caterpillar, over Israel's use of its bulldozers.
Those reasons could lead the committee to choose someone who could “appease Trump,” for example by awarding the prize to a humanitarian organization like Emergency Response Rooms in Sudan, Leira said. Greger also mentioned that group as a possible candidate.
But Leira added that some committee members have indicated they don’t “respond well” to pressure, which could lead to a potentially more provocative outcome. Greger suggested that the International Criminal Court or the Committee to Protect Journalists could be choices that would anger Trump, given that his administration has imposed sanctions on the ICC and taken steps to restrict the work of journalists reporting from the White House and the Pentagon.
A European diplomat also pointed out that Trump had recently renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War. His victory in the peace prize competition, the diplomat said, “would send a strange signal.” “But we all live in Trump’s world now. This debate about the Nobel Prize only highlights that,” the official told the FT.
Bonus video:
