There are calls that Donald Trump should get the Nobel Peace Prize for his excellence in getting Kim Young ‘Un to, err, what was it? Step across the border? That might be a little premature you know, just a fraction and ever so little:
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said that Donald Trump deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts at bringing North Korea to the bargaining table over the country’s nuclear weapons programme.
There’s more than a little puzzlement at this. For the achievement wasn’t actually all that large:
If anyone were to win the Nobel Peace Prize for the current effort to solve the North Korean nuclear problem, it should be President Trump. That’s what South Korea’s president said Monday when it was suggested that he himself should be in line for the award.
You see, the North Koreans have managed to blow their own nuclear testing site up. That’s the gossip at least. They’ve managed this by the triple trick of not building it very well to start with, not maintaining it and over-using it. Thus they’ve not really got a nuclear development program – they’ve got how ever many bombs they’ve built already at whatever level of sophistication they’ve already managed.
So it’s not actually a grand job well done getting Young ‘Un to emerge from the Hermit Kingdom for a chat about what we’ll give him if he agrees not to go further nuclear.
So, even if there were to be a Peace Prize on offer for a Korean agreement we’d probably prefer it to be a little further down the line, when someone’s done something difficult.
There is also the conceptual point that perhaps a President should never get one. We do hire these politicos in order to get a modicum of peace around the world and prizes for simply doing your job are a bit odd.
On the other hand it’s a simply great idea to give Trump the Peace Prize. For it would massively piss off all those who applauded Obama’s such a few years back. You know, before Barack had actually done anything at all?
Geir Lundestad told the AP news agency that the committee hoped the award would strengthen Mr Obama.
Instead, the decision was met with criticism in the US. Many argued he had not had any impact worthy of the award.
Mr Lundestad, writing in his memoir, Secretary of Peace, said even Mr Obama himself had been surprised.
“No Nobel Peace Prize ever elicited more attention than the 2009 prize to Barack Obama,” Mr Lundestad writes.
“Even many of Obama’s supporters believed that the prize was a mistake,” he says. “In that sense the committee didn’t achieve what it had hoped for”.
How you weight these different criteria is of course up to you. Myself I’d award it tomorrow to The Donald. No, not because I’m in favour of him and his policies, but just because it would annoy so many of the right people.
To have received that prize is no recommendation judged on past form. But Trump? YMBFJ.
Tim’s is exactly the right take: The only remaining point of the Nobel Peace Prize is to piss off the right people. Rhoda, giving it to Trump is miles ahead of nominating Obama in the second week of his Presidency based on “hope” for all the peace he would serve up (by, what? “leading from behind”?). Or by awarding Al Gore, essentially for being a good impresario in the absence of hard facts. Kim Jong-Un was not simply coaxed out of his rabbit hole; he made the (admittedly superficial) concession of cancelling the decision, a few years back, of having… Read more »
Looking at it sideways, the last few years has been Kim building up to a position where he can claim with a sufficiently straight face to an be equal at Korea/Korea talks.
“It must really suck to be John Kerry and not have one”
But John Kerry got a Purple Heart, didn’t he?
I only say that the committee would do anything NOT to give it to Trump. Probably Kim will get it together with Moon if peace breaks out.
Not a good enough reason. I mean war is serious stuff. Peace should be too.