Donald Trump’s quest for the Nobel Peace Prize

Throughout his private and public career, the current president of the United States has had his one constant: the pursuit of his personal goals with an almost complete disregard to the costs to others. Evidenced early in his business career, then his personal, and now public life, winning at any cost has been a modus operandi. He has not been above hurting others, whether adversaries or anyone who gets in the way of goals. Once the pursuit is over, the reframing of reality to fit the perception of success (regardless of the truth) have shaped his actions and worldview. Trumps personal ambitions have often come at great costs, with ramifications to all participants, both the willing, and those who just happened to be caught-up in his actions.   

Unintended consequences occurring in the pursuit of goals are evident in a variety of life’s arenas, even within education where there is a phenomenon called the “washback effect”. Which is the risk that educators face when the metrics for their curriculum are predetermined by the end of the course test. With teaching performance results tied to student exam success, a tendency to ‘teach to the test’ arises, thus potentially creating phony and skewed learning environments, while ignoring actual needs of students in favor of grade goals. With the end justifying the means approach students become ‘collateral damage’ as they are subjected to a classroom that is focused on artificial success factors.  

With collateral damage in mind, one way to at least partly explain President Trump’s eclectically disjointed foreign policy is through his personal quest for trophies, with Nobel Peace Prize another ultimate one. As someone who has spent his life pursuing ambitions, “proving his worth”, and, more recently, trying to outdo his predecessor (President Obama, whom he is known to constantly put-down) it must be impossible to resist its lure.

The public moment when this desire was palpable was during his Michigan rally in 2018, after a group of his supporters started the chanting “Nobel, Nobel…” causing a pause in the monologue. The next day Lindsay Graham gave his endorsement for the prize, as have others including former Japanese Prime Minister Abe and his South Korean counterpart Moon. These actions are ones that would greatly please the president within his binary loser/winner, black/white worldview.  

Since its inception in 1901, a total of 1/5^th of US presidents (4) have received the prize making it around. Of the president’s forerunners, the one that gets most of his attention is, of course, Barak Obama, recipient of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize which was very early on during his presidential tenure.  That others not his self-perceived level as he is are recipients and he is not would only be a source of irritation for him. Last summer the president could not hide his surprise during a White House visit by the young Iraqi activist Nadia Murad, that she had the Nobel Prize. As someone who is known to disparage women, and the entire continent of Africa, as well as an anti-environmentalist, it is hard to imagine what Professor Wangari Maathi might have thought of Trump.

In trying to understand his actions, the power of positive thinking philosophy to get what he wants can help spell out the paradox of Trumps actions. There has always been the simultaneous courting and coveting acceptance of traditional institutions, all the while attacking them. This is nothing new, with well documented deep-seated anxieties consuming him, pushing forward goals of greater wealth and power which ended up requiring mythmaking of successes (true and false) to be packaged and sold. While flashy styles may not work well to open up to the traditional establishment, that gaudy stylistic has been extremely effective with numerous Americans, his political ‘base’, who tend to believe that he embodies the personification of wealth.  There should be little surprise that this has worked well enough for him to achieve success of those goals. Watching the election that is underway in America now it is hard not to draw a conclusion that the Trump team has not been influenced by what was written over 500 years ago by Machiavelli who stated ‘…the vulgar crowd is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar”. 

An illustration of the costs that others incur for Mr. Trumps personal ambitions can be seen with his 1980’s foray into Atlantic City. It is an example of the fallacy of the narrow focus on personal goals and the quest to fulfil them without thinking long term. At one time, his goal of being the biggest in the city’s gaming industry was indeed fulfilled, but achieving it was done at extreme costs to all stakeholders; residents, employees, and contractors losing livelihoods, money in many cases everything as his companies all went bankrupt. While a dismal business failure, it was reframed in Trumpian ‘truthful hyperbole’ it becomes a ‘success’, with complete disregard for the truth. This mythmaking to for personal gain is something that the world can ill afford-when global peace is at stake.

After all, globally now we are all stakeholders

With increased brinksmanship in international relations during the Trump administration, there are obvious risks of accidental war. What might be evident to Trump: gaining credibility as a peacemaker worthy of recognition only works when pulling back from the abyss. This, however, might not be obvious to the other actors on the international stage-creating hazards that could rapidly plunge out of control.  

So far, the brinkmanship-isms since his tenure as president meant the need for creating ‘manufactured crises’. The danger is that a singular individuals self-interested foreign policy has led recent contradictions of mixed messages and backpaddling, leaves allies and foes confused.  

An example of a disturbing area centers around what outgoing President Obama called the incoming president’s “biggest challenge”, North Korea. For Trump, getting a deal to end the war, of course would mean getting the prize. Thus far the flaws in any personal goal fulfilment deal is that the DPRK gains a favorable outcome. Thus far Kim Jung Un has gained quite a lot in terms of legitimacy, and global recognition, but little else. Recent missile tests (four in two weeks) don’t seem to bother the president and may in fact be what he wants as he positions himself to be the peacemaker.    

While simplistic explanations for US foreign policy might seem to be hubris, or pedantry, except that it is through contextualizing the actions of the president that things start to make at least some semblance of sense. Therefore, it is not a hard leap to see how the goal of a prize can shape the actions of the current administration’s “doctrine”.  However, this may change with the nomination announced twice-once for his Israel-UAE normalization, and again for Serbia-Kosovo. The October 9^th announcement will lead to the December 10^th awards ceremony when it is bestowed.  If awarded there may be less intensity in the way that foreign policy is pursued-which should create a less volatile world.

This is critical, because during the last G20 meeting, before COVID-19 last year in Japan, it is unfortunate that the 45^th POTUS did not take the time to head south of the Kansai area to visit to the war museums of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The latter holds the actual diploma and replica of the 1995 medal and original certificate awarded to the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs along with Joseph Rotblat. While the horrors displayed in the museum of what “Fire and fury”, or “Destruction like the world has never seen before” may or not register on the notoriously distracted president the bright symbolic relics might.

To quote the display in Nagasaki nuclear museum: “the peace symbols are designed to show that dialogue across divides can help build a more peaceful and less dangerous world”. With last week’s nominations, there are two thoughts that come to mind. One the one hand, Alfred Nobel would no doubt be horrified at the spectacle taking place with the irony of potentially devastating wars being started because of a desire by an individual’s quest for the coveted prize he established.  On the other, if the solution is to have a lot more ordered and peaceful world by giving him his target: just give him the damn symbols.