Trump's Nobel Peace Prize campaign

WashingtonDonald Trump turned the Alaska and Washington summits into a grand showcase of why he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The American president lamented against Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders of the deaths on the forehead and emphasized his haste to put an "end to the killings," although he no longer sees the need for a ceasefire as a preliminary step to a peace agreement. Trump used foreign leaders as a cover to address the Norwegian Nobel Committee. And if it wasn't obvious, he clarified: "We've ended six wars, and that's not even taking into account that we've annihilated Iran's future nuclear capabilities." The next day, press secretary Karoline Leavitt increased the number to "seven wars."

The American president has never hidden his desire to win the awardThe man who has led the country down a path of polarization and who instigated the assault on the Capitol, said during his inaugural address that he wants to be remembered as a "peacemaker." "The legacy I will be most proud of will be that of being a peacemaker and a unifier," he stated in January. A month later, frustrated at his continued mired in the war in Gaza and Ukraine, he grumbled, "They will never give me the Nobel Peace Prize. I deserve it, but they will never give it to me." The Republican, who has taken a back seat to Israel's genocide against the Palestinian people and who gives Putin time to move forward with the invasion, believes he is not doing enough as a peacemaker.

In his campaign for the Nobel Prize, Trump told Fox on Tuesday that he seeks peace through spiritual motivations: "You know what? If I can save 7,000 people a week from being killed, I think that's good. I want to try to go to heaven, if possible. I feel like I'm not doing very well. I've felt..."

Unable to take credit for resolving the two major conflicts of the moment, in Gaza and Ukraine, Trump has begun trying to score points elsewhere. The precursor to theAmerica first has become involved in conflicts in distant countries that are of little interest to the American taxpayer and that do not promise to be a campaign claim ahead of the midterm elections. Trump has washed his hands of Ukraine and NATO by saying that there is an "ocean in between" and that it is a European problem, but it seems that the conflict between Armenia and AzerbaijanSouth of the Caucasus isn't that far away. Nor is Rwanda and Congo.

"Six Wars"

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is one of the "six wars" that Trump boasted on Monday of having closed. Although the number is more of an understatement and confirms one of the major concerns about the president's peacemaking aspirations: to what extent will he be able to establish lasting peace rather than temporary fixes? The agreement signed by Armenia and Azerbaijan on August 8 at the White House falls far short of a formal peace treaty with legal obligations. One of the major stumbling blocks to the agreement is that the agreement first requires Armenia to revise its Constitution. Trump's peace plan also calls for the construction of a highway—dubbed the Trump Highway to International Peace and Prosperity—that would connect Azerbaijan with Naxcivan, an enclave in southern Armenia.

The bombing of the nuclear facilities in Iran, with the subsequent ceasefire with Israel in June, and the 60-day truce in Gaza agreed upon at the beginning of the year would also be part of the tally. The regime of the ayatollahs was weakened after the attack, but it is not a final point. In the case of Palestine, just on Wednesday Israel began the ground invasion of Gaza City after starving it to death. The initial January truce broke down after Tel Aviv continued to bomb the Strip and Hamas responded to the attacks by failing to release the October 7 hostages.

Trump also claims to have put an end to three decades of war between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and RwandaIn June, Washington announced the end of hostilities. According to the president, both sides laid down their weapons after promising that American mining companies would invest in the Kivu region in the east of the country, invaded by the M23 rebels—who had Rwandan support. The person in charge of securing the minerals agreement with the Democratic Republic of Congo is Massad Boulos. In addition to being the White House's senior advisor on Africa, he is also the father-in-law of the former Prime Minister. the president's youngest daughter, Tiffany Trump.

The White House list also includes the high fire agreement between Cambodia and Thailand After five days of fighting, Trump again applied a business-oriented approach and threatened both countries with a freeze on trade agreements if they did not sit down to negotiate. The president also revived two mediations from his first term: the diplomatic dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia, which is not officially considered a war, and the tensions between Serbia and Kosovo, which signed an economic agreement with US mediation in 2020.

Netanyahu's nomination

Trump also counts the mediations in the escalation of tensions between Pakistan and India last May as a settled conflict. While Islamabad has attributed the credit to the Republican, New Delhi has downplayed it. The president's desire to win the Nobel Prize has also become a kind of diplomatic tool for those who want to celebrate Washington. While relations with India's Narendra Modi are not going through the best of times, Pakistan has taken the opportunity to get closer to the Republican and, as a result of the mediation, nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took note and He repeated the same move on one of his last visits to the White House.Grateful for Trump's carte blanche regarding his plans for ethnic cleansing and the Fordow bombing, he let him know that he had nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Cambodia has also nominated the president.

Beyond public display, Trump has also employed diplomacy to advance work behind the scenes. The Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv has reported that Trump called Norwegian Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg in July to discuss tariffs and the Nobel Prize. Shortly after, Stoltenberg confirmed the call to Political.

Winning the Nobel Peace Prize would be a validation of his motto "Peace through strength" [peace by force] and, in a way, by his distortion of concepts. Trump has filled his vocabulary with oxymorons that shape reality to his liking: this is what he did with the pardon of the Capitol rioters or what he is doing now with the militarization of Washington.