It’s hard to argue that the sitting US president is particularly good at attracting public attention to his persona, which he has proven once again last week, when he announced that he deserved to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on North Korea and Syria. But then he complained that he would probably never get the honor, or would he? According to the leading politician in the US, he saved some three million Syrian lives (sic) by warning Moscow, Damascus and Tehran against an attempted liberation of the city of Idlib that was and still is held by radical militants.
It curious that just a couple days ago Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Price for his alleged achievements in disarming the North Korean nuclear crisis. This fact was revealed by none other than Donald Trump himself, who pointed out that Abe sent him a copy of the letter he submitted to the Nobel Prize committee.
Then, this whole situation started looking particularly peculiar when Japan’s newspaper the Asashi Shimbun released a report stating that according to unnamed sources within the US government, the White House “informally” requested Tokyo to nominate Trump after he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore last June, during the first-ever summit between the US and North Korea.
There’s well over 300 candidates nominated for Nobel Peace Prize this year, but no one is going to reveal their identities as the Nobel Prize committee would traditionally keep the list of nominees a secret. Surprisingly enough, Trump’s predecessor did actually receive a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, in spite of the countless drone assassinations that Barack Obama oversaw personally. Back then numerous commentators would point out that Norway, the state that hosts the Nobel Prize committee, tried to demonstrate its unparalleled loyalty and complete obedience to Washington through this step.
So Tokyo is now bound to receive the same exact treatment as Norway did. Shinzo Abe would love to see Pyongyang’s nuclear program dismantled one way or the other, with Japan keep enjoying Washington’s support in territorial disputes with Russia and economic wars with China. Those topics shouldn’t be overlooked, as the way they are going to be approached will determine the role Japan will play in the regional game and the future political career of Shinzo Abe.
However, we must also not forget that servile moods towards Trump would start to manifest themselves well over a year ago.
In January 2018, Norway’s Nettavisen announced that Donald Trump was among the most likely contenders for the Nobel Peace Prize. At that time the director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Henrik Urdal announced that the initiative to nominate Trump “belongs to an American”, however he failed to clarify who exactly was bold enough to come up with such an idea.
Last June, once the summit between the leading political figures of the United States and North Korea was concluded, similar flattering proposals were made by various members of the Norwegian parliament, as reported by the NRK television channel. However, it was pretty clear for pretty much everyone even back then that that Pyongyang, Seoul, Moscow and Beijing did all the heavy lifting for Trump long before the bilateral summit even started. However, as the deal with North Korea wasn’t finalized, the Nobel Prize committee hesitated to nominate Trump for this award back then. And even now, a year later, there’s no predicting what twist the developments on the Korean Peninsula may take.
It’s hard to disagree with Sweden’s Svenska Dagbladet that argues that it’s nearly impossible to imagine Trump becoming a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. It’s clear that a person who is presented with this well-respected award must be the embodiment of wisdom and integrity. However, there’s no imagining a person who is constantly praising his own looks and wits next to Mother Theresa or Malala Yousafza.
To be completely frank, Donald Trump couldn’t be less concerned with saving civilian lives, let alone saving millions of them. As a matter of fact, his disregard for the so-called collateral damage that American armed forces keep inflicting in the course of their operations means that Trump would have a much better chance ending up in the dock at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg than at the Nobel Prize stage. Moreover, it was Donald Trump who announced last year that Washington was withdrawing from a number of international agreements, including the one that empowers the International Court of Justice.
Further still, Washington carries on its illegal military aggression against Syria on Trump’s orders. US Air Strikes are claiming hundreds of civilian lives across Syria every day, without any form of recuperation from the international community.
On February 9, yet another US air raid in Syria resulted in three civilians perishing in the Syrian town of al-Tayyaneh in the Deir ez-Zor Governorate.
Two days later, a new attack claimed the lives of sixteen more civilians in the Syrian village of Baguz. And then, on the very next day a series of air strikes resulted in the death toll of 70 local residents, which resulted in Syria’s ministry of foreign affairs accusing the US-led coalition of repeatedly committing crimes against humanity.
And those are the civilian casualties Syria suffered in just two weeks, and how many more people perished under US bombs prior to that?
Just recently, the US Senate that remains under the Republican control, approved the Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East act, which imposes sanctions against Syria and its allies. Without a doubt, this step cannot be regarded as Trump’s personal contribution to the peaceful resolution of the Syrian conflict, but this is just another example of Trump’s immoral behavior.
All across Syria there’s new rallies every day with local residents demanding Washington to stop its genocide against the people of Syria and withdraw its troops from this war-torn country immediately. Similar appeals have been submitted by Damascus to the UN Security Council, but to no avail. So it’s only logical to demand: “Do you really think that you deserve a Nobel Peace Prize, Mister Trump?”
Grete Mautner is an independent researcher and journalist from Germany, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”