Why President Trump didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize

M AGA America, the White House, and President Donald Trump’s reaction to President Trump not being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize ranged from innocent questions as to why not, to insane or delusional accusations of why not. Proving beyond the shadow of doubt that MAGA America, the White House, and President Trump do not truly appreciate why or what the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded for, as a scion of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., hopefully, I can provide some insight into why the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded.

In keeping with the true spirit and tradition of the peace prize, the 5-member Nobel Peace Prize Committee chose as the 2025 recipient María Corina Machado, a much lesser internationally known politician than President Trump, who currently exerts great moral authority in her quest, to establish democracy but holds no government position and no political power in her much less powerful, much more autocratic country than America, Venezuela. Instead of accepting the integrity of the peace prize committee’s choice, which might create an opportunity to gain insight into the true spirit of the Nobel Peace Prize and why its awarded, a White House spokesman responded on X to the peace prize announcement by saying, “President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives”, and claimed the Nobel Peace Prize Committee “proved they place politics over peace” by not awarding the prize to President Trump.

A day before the prize announcement, President Trump criticized former President Barack Obama for winning the prize within months of taking office in 2009, saying, “He got a prize for doing nothing. Obama got a prize, he didn’t even know what he got. He got elected, and they gave it to Obama for doing absolutely nothing but destroying our country. He was not a good president”, Trump added, before going on to say that his 2024 reelection was “much more important” than Obama’s historic victory in 2008.

According to the last will and testament of the man who bequeathed his fortune to establish the Nobel Prizes, Swedish inventor of dynamite Alfred Nobel, the peace prize should be awarded to the person or organization “who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Since World War 2 the Nobel Peace Prize Committee says it has focused on awarding the prize to recipients that impact 4 areas: arms control and disarmament, peace negotiation, democracy and human rights, and work aimed at creating a better organized and more peaceful world, now in the 21st century the committee has added man-made climate change and threats to the environment as areas eligible for peace prize consideration.

There is a grain of truth in the White House spokesperson’s claim that the “Nobel Peace Prize Committee places politics over peace”; the committee does place peace politics over a violent peace. An example of violent peace is what’s playing out currently in the Gaza Strip. Israel has stopped dropping bombs, so peace exists, but so does the violence of occupation, starvation, disease, and Palestinians living among the rubble of decimated homes and bomb-out buildings.  

From 1939 to 1943, the Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded because peace was nonexistent due to World War II. In 1944, as the war was winding down, it was awarded to the International Committee of the Red Cross for its work during World War II. Since 1944, it was not awarded in 1948, 1955, 1956, 1966, 1967, and 1972 because the prize committee determined there was no suitable recipient. Only one person has ever refused to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1973, it was awarded jointly to Vietnamese politician Lê Đức Thọ and U.S. Secretary Henry Kissinger for negotiating the Paris Peace Accords to end the Vietnam War.

Lê Đức Thọ refused to accept, citing the fact that the war had not ended. There is no step 1, 2, 3, and then you win the Nobel Peace Prize, there is no rhetorical formula to winning the prize, there is no degree of personal stature that will guarantee winning the prize, besides Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi is the world’s most famous proponent of peace and nonviolence, but unlike King he was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. All nominations to the prize committee are kept confidential, and committee members are prohibited from discussing their decisions for 50 years. The only way to know who is nominated for the prize is for the nominators to disclose who they nominated.

There is only one consistency in what person is awarded, what organization is awarded, and what cause is awarded; each peace prize recipient symbolizes in some way, either traditionally or uniquely, peaceful coexistence among human beings. This broad definition of what qualifies for a Nobel Peace Prize is why President Trump was wrong when he said, former President Obama won the prize in 2009 for doing nothing. Since peace prize nomination submissions for 2009 started in October of 2008 and ended on January 31, 2009, meaning Barack Obama had only been President for less than 2 weeks before the 2009 submission deadline, it gives the false impression to President Trump that Obama did nothing as President to earn the 2009 prize. It only gives one the false impression if you don’t understand the Nobel Committee’s broad definition of what it takes to uplift peaceful coexistence among human beings.

The prize committee said it awarded Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”, for calling for a new start to relations between the Muslim world and the West based on common interests and mutual understanding and respect, and for setting in motion a plan for the withdrawal of U.S. occupying forces from Iraq. In other words, Obama won the peace prize not so much for what he did, but rather for what he represented.

In 2003, then-President George W. Bush launched what he falsely described as a “preemptive war”, which is an internationally recognized legal conflict initiated with the belief that an attack on a country is imminent, so a first strike is necessary to prevent the imminent attack. In truth, what Bush launched was a preventive war, which is a conflict initiated with the belief that an attack is not imminent but inevitable at some point in the future, since the attack is only possible, but not certain. International law considers preventive war illegal.

Bush justified his preventive war to invade Iraq and overthrow its government domestically in America by issuing a new National Security Strategy (NSS), issued September 20, 2002, that broadened the definition of preemptive war to encompass preventive war as well, the broadened definition meant American force may be used even without evidence of an imminent attack, to ensure that a serious threat to the United States does not “gather” or grow over time.

Since he was unable to get an approval vote for the war from the United Nations (UN), an Iraq invasion would be considered illegal by international law. In an attempt to make his preventive war internationally legal, Bush assembled a “coalition of the willing” to invade and disarm Iraq of all its weapons of mass destruction, as well as to overthrow and remove both President Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government. In 2003, there were 191 member countries in the UN; the international opposition was so strong against an invasion of Iraq that only 48 countries joined Bush’s coalition, and of the 48, only 4, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Poland, contributed troops to the invasion.

America’s invasion of Iraq was hugely unpopular, and it squandered all the goodwill the world showered America with after the 9/11 attacks. To a horrified world, America was setting the war precedent that because violent radical middle eastern Islamists committed the 9/11 attack on America, if America suspects that a middle east Islamic country, not on friendly terms with America, possesses weapons of mass destruction, then America will launch a preventive war with the Islamic country because the Islamic country might decide to use the weapons for a future attack on America. To rub salt in the wound inflicted on the world by the war, after America invaded Iraq and overthrew its government, no weapons of mass destruction, nuclear or biological, were ever found anywhere in Iraq.

The four main planks of Obama’s 2008 campaign to be President were:

• A denunciation of the concept of preventative war and a pledge that he would never start an Iraqi-type preventative war;
• A pledge to withdraw American troops that were occupying Iraq ASAP;
• A pledge to establish a new peaceful dialogue with the Muslim Middle East;
• A pledge to develop a healthcare plan that provides all Americans with the healthcare they need, regardless of their ability to pay for it.

After Bush’s new preventive national security policy and his war invasion of Iraq, instilled in the world a new fear of preventive war breaking out at a drop of a hat, Obama, being elected President on a platform of ending the 5-year Iraqi occupation, a pledge to never start a preventive war, and since his election victory occurred a little more than 30 days before the Nobel Peace Prize Committee started accepting nominations for the 2009 winner, earned him the peace prize nomination on November 4, 2008 the day he was elected President, but not sworn in yet as President. Because his election victory represented a new American policy of defensive peace replacing Bush’s offensive war policy, Obama’s nomination for the peace prize was never based on anything he did as President.

But what Obama did after becoming President probably ensured he would be the 2009 winner. Within 6 months of becoming President, and approximately 3 months before the 2009 prize winner was decided and announced, Obama followed through on a campaign pledge by traveling to Cairo University in Egypt and delivering a speech titled “A New Beginning”, which covered 7 subjects: violent extremism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nuclear weapons (with a reference to Iran), democracy, religious freedom, women’s rights, and economic development. The speech called for improved mutual understanding and relations between the Islamic world and the West, described America’s alliance with Israel as an unbreakable mutual bond, and also described the stateless status of Palestinians as “intolerable” and that recognizing Palestinians’ aspirations for statehood and dignity is as legitimate as Israel’s desire for a Jewish homeland.

If you contrast the symbolism of all three of President Trump’s presidential campaigns in 2016, 2020, and 2024, that consistently propagated;

• White Christian nationalism;
• A pledge to make cultural, racial, religious, gender, and sexual orientation diversity in America illegal;
• A pledge to end American foreign aid to countries in need of help to address starvation and disease;
• A pledge to deport all non-European people living in the U.S. who are not American citizens, regardless of how or why they came to America,

with the opposite campaign symbolism of peaceful world coexistence that the 2008 Obama campaign propagated, you begin to understand why the Nobel Peace Prize Committee might think twice about awarding President Trump, who not only campaigned propagating violent coexistence with some parts of the world, but after being elected President for the 2nd time he renamed America’s Department of Defense, which symbolizes reactionary violence to defend and preserve life or peace, to the Department of War, which symbolizes proactive violence to conquer, defeat, or eliminate life or peace.

Many thought President Trump should have won the Nobel for the deal he brokered, which stopped Israeli bomb drops in Gaza and forced HAMAS to release all the remaining living Israeli hostages. This was a tremendous presidential achievement for President Trump; aside from freeing the hostages and shutting down Israel’s bombs, he placed the Israel-Palestine conflict back on the road to peace.

But since the deal President Trump brokered was a cease-fire agreement and not a true peace agreement, and since the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize has already been awarded jointly to former Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, former Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Rabin, and former Foreign Minister of Israel Shimon Peres for negotiating and signing the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Nobel committee concluded that President Trump’s ceasefire, as welcomed as it is by them and the world, came nowhere near meeting the high bar of achievement Arafat, Rabin, and Peres established with the Oslo Accords, therefore, the cease fire agreement was not worthy of the peace prize.

Because by agreeing to the Oslo Accords Palestinians agreed to recognize the state of Israel’s right to peacefully exist for the first time, Israel agreed to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the official representative of the Palestinian people for the first time, and Israel agreed to grant the PLO limited Palestinian self-governance over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for the first time, with the intention being a future transition from limited Palestinian self-governance to an independent Palestinian state, and even though limited self-governance by Palestinians no longer exists and the current Israeli government is opposed to a future independent Palestinian state, the Oslo Accords still maintains a level of achievement that President Trump’s cease fire agreement can’t match.

Also, from the Nobel committee’s perspective, President Trump is in the process of committing a glaring contradiction in terms of promoting peace. He ended America’s giving Ukraine the weapons it needs to defend itself against Russia’s offensive war of invasion and conquest, saying the only way Ukraine could get any more weapons to protect itself against a war it did not start would be for Ukraine to pay for them. On the other hand, President Trump has given Israel all the weapons it needs to commit genocidal war in Gaza, and to offensively drop bombs on countries like Iran and Qatar, an American ally, for whatever reason Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thinks necessary, free of charge. This contradiction might give the Nobel Committee the impression that President Trump will give weapons for free to make war, but will charge for weapons to defend against war to make peace.

Yet, due to the Nobel Committee’s broad definition of how peaceful coexistence and nonviolence can be uplifted, hope springs eternal for President Trump winning the peace prize; he just needs to uplift peace in a way that negates past instances where the Nobel Committee felt he uplifted war or violence. Fortunately for President Trump, there is a way he can uplift peace in a way that would make the Nobel Committee comfortable overlooking his past instances of promoting war or violence, and guarantee his quest for the Nobel Peace Prize is successful.

All President Trump would have to do is establish an Israeli-Palestinian Demilitarized Zone (IPDMZ) similar to the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that 28,000 American troops currently maintain on a strip of land between South Korea and North Korea, that is not occupied by either South Korea or North Korea, it serves as a neutral buffer zone where the two nations can meet when negotiations need to take place. The Israeli-Palestinian Demilitarized Zone (IPDMZ) that America would establish between Israel and the proposed Palestinian state would be a neutral land zone occupied and staffed, 24/7, with 5,000 American troops.

Instead of just giving Israel money and weapons to defend itself, part of the money we give can be used to fund American troop presence in the IPDMZ, adding the third element of fighting troops to the money and weapons support currently guaranteeing Israel’s peace and security. After the IPDMZ is established, Israel would withdraw all Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops from all land designated for the state of Palestine.  Israel’s last negotiating partner for peace and the recognized legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, the PLO, would be empowered with American and international technical help to establish the new state of Palestine on the previously occupied land.

The PLO would be free to establish a democratic state with all the same rights and privileges as any other free democratic society. This would include a mandatory democratic Palestine Constitution, mandatory consistent one-person-one-vote-counted elections for Palestinian citizens, Palestinian control of airports for planes, Palestinian control of ports of entry for shipping, a Palestinian justice system to administer the rule of Palestinian constitutional law, Palestinian police forces for domestic security, and Palestinian armed forces for self-defense. The number 1 rule would be Don’t F*** with Israel! 5,000 American troops present in the IPDMZ would guarantee no one would, including Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran.

With a demilitarized zone between Israel and Palestine manned by American troops, Israel’s legitimate fear of Hamas rocket fire, or of being in close proximity to people hostile to their existence, can end immediately. Israel would be able to return to its prosperous growth trajectory in peace and security, with America ensuring its peace and security, while helping the international community sponsor the creation of a new Palestinian democracy, where citizens are free to experience life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But an independent, self-determining democratic state of Palestine with an economy that provides jobs for its citizens, and has its own intelligence and police capabilities to identify, pursue, and subdue terrorist elements like Hamas, is ultimately the best and most reliable way to secure long-term peace and security for the state of Israel.

If Palestinians can live the same life of self-determination and freedom as Israelis, it is no longer in their best interest to be at war with their next-door neighbor, or to allow a terrorist element to exist in their country that would launch missiles against their innocent next-door neighbor, Israel. The current Korean demilitarized zone has maintained a cease-fire status for 73 years between North Korea and South Korea, two nations that officially still have a state of war declared against each other.

If President Trump were to make real America’s long-stated policy of two INDEPENDENT states living together side by side in peace NOW, not a 20-point plan with promises of a future Palestine, but a Palestinian self-governing state created now. By establishing an Israel-Palestine demilitarized neutral zone staffed with 5,000 on-the-ground American troops, which would allow the PLO to move IMMEDIATELY, with the technical assistance of the international community, to create the new state of Palestine. President Trump would not only match the achievement of the Oslo Accords, he would leave what Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres achieved with the Oslo Accords in the dust, guaranteeing that the very next winner of the Nobel Peace Prize would be President Donald John Trump!

GOING FURTHER

• Nobel Peace Prize Committee

• Announcement, Nobel Peace Prize 2025 | NOBEL PRIZE

• Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado wins Nobel Peace Prize | BBC NEWS

• Oslo Accords | BRITTANICA

Sources:

▪ This piece was first published in Isaac Newton Farris Jr and re-published in Europeans TODAY on 26 October 2025 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. | The author writes in a personal capacity.

▪ Cover: Dreamstime/Антон Скрипачев.