The Travesty of the Nobel Peace Prize
When Alfred Nobel created his celebrated prize in 1895, he imagined honoring those who ‘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.’ A century and a quarter later, the words still sound noble. The actions do not.
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize has once again gone to someone whose moral record stands at sharp odds with the spirit of peace itself—someone who has either openly justified or quietly enabled state violence, occupation, or genocide. Like the great war criminal Henry Kissinger, who received the same prize in 1973 even as B-52s bombed Cambodia and Laos into ash, the current choice proves that the Nobel Peace Prize has long ceased to represent peace. It represents power—its language, its alliances, and its exclusions.
The Pattern of Political Reward
The history of the Nobel Peace Prize is, in many ways, a mirror of Western geopolitics. Consider the roll call:
• Henry Kissinger, whose covert wars and coups—from Vietnam and Chile to Bangladesh—shaped half a century of human suffering. His co-awardee, Le Duc Tho of Vietnam, had the integrity to refuse the prize.
• Barack Obama, who accepted the Peace Prize in 2009 while expanding drone strikes and wars he had not even ended.
• Aung San Suu Kyi, once a global icon of democracy, later complicit in the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya.
The pattern is clear: the Nobel Peace Prize often rewards managers of empire, not challengers of it. It rewards those who can stabilize the existing order after violence, not those who resist violence at its roots.
The Politics of Exclusion
Equally revealing are the names that never appear. Why has Noam Chomsky, perhaps the most consistent global voice for peace and justice in the modern era, never been considered? His moral clarity against war, imperialism, and propaganda has inspired generations across continents. His associate Edward Said, who gave us the intellectual framework to understand colonial narratives and their persistence, was also ignored.
Why has the prize not gone to Greta Thunberg, who speaks for planetary survival with more courage than all the climate conferences combined? Or to José Andrés and World Central Kitchen, who feed the hungry and displaced in war zones from Gaza to Haiti? Why not to the countless field workers, doctors, teachers, and grassroots peacebuilders in Sudan, Somalia, Congo, Kashmir, Yemen, or the refugee camps of the Mediterranean?
Or to organizations like Brooklyn For Peace that have for decades championed anti-war, pro-justice work at the community level without global recognition? Or to writers and activists like Naomi Klein, who have consistently exposed the links between capitalism, climate disaster, and war profiteering?
Peace as Propaganda
Every Nobel ceremony becomes a spectacle for the same global machinery that profits from war and extraction. Corporate networks broadcast the laureate’s acceptance speech as if the act of televised virtue could erase the bombs falling elsewhere. Newspapers print glossy supplements extolling the ‘hope’ and ‘resilience’ of the awardee, while keeping silent about those buried in the debris of their policies.
This is not peace—it is propaganda dressed as conscience. The Nobel aura sanitizes empire. When a world leader receives the prize, it provides moral insurance for future wars. When a Western-aligned activist receives it, the choice is advertised as ‘universal.’ But the truly universal voices—the displaced mother in Gaza, the indigenous protector of the Amazon, the union organizer in Bangladesh—remain unseen and uninvited.
The Peace Prize, like much of global media, is an instrument of manufactured consent. It tells the educated classes whom to admire, whom to forget, and what counts as ‘peaceful.’ By rewarding establishment virtue, it helps the establishment sleep well at night.
The Silenced Majority
We rarely ask: Who nominates the nominees? Who controls the information pipelines through which candidates are judged? Most members of the Nobel Committee come from elite political or academic backgrounds—precisely the circles most insulated from the consequences of war.
A true peace prize would emerge from the victims of war, not its administrators. It would ask the children of Gaza, the farmers of Colombia, the miners of Congo, and the refugees of the Rohingya camps whom they consider peacemakers.
If that were to happen, we might hear names like Medea Benjamin, Arundhati Roy, or the activists of Doctors Without Borders—not the polished diplomats of the same states that build bombs by day and hand out prizes by night.
The Alternative Vision
The Peace Prize, in its present form, cannot be salvaged—it must be reimagined. Let there be a People’s Peace Prize, chosen not by elites but by global citizens. Let the honor go to those who embody peace not in conference rooms but on front lines of hunger, ecology, and human dignity. Let there be awards for the anonymous nurse in Sudan, the teacher in a Rohingya camp, the tribal guardian of the Amazon forest. Let the word ‘peace’ mean survival, compassion, and solidarity—not polished diplomacy and profitable silence.
Conclusion: Rejecting the Hoopla
When we exclude the truth-tellers, we exclude peace itself. The Nobel Peace Prize, like the journalism that amplifies it, has become a symbol of moral hypocrisy: rewarding power for its rhetoric, punishing conscience for its honesty.
It is time people looked beyond the dazzling Oslo stage lights and examined the sinister, covert politics of this prize. The Peace Prize, in its current form, is a propaganda tool—a glittering award that legitimizes wars, greenwashes imperialism, and rebrands violence as virtue. Citizens of the world must learn to reject the hoopla altogether.
History will not remember the medals. It will remember the people—those who built peace with their hands, hunger, and hearts, and were never invited to Oslo.
Nobel Committee: A Prize for US Military Regime Change
The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize Rewards Militarism, Defies Alfred Nobel’s Will
The board of the Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research (TFF) strongly condemns the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has once again violated Alfred Nobel’s original mandate by honouring a figure who openly advocates foreign military intervention.
In a CBS News interview, Machado declared:
“The only way to stop the suppression is by force—U.S. force.”
She has also appealed directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, asking him to use “force and influence” to help dismantle Venezuela’s government—a move documented in her 2018 letter and widely circulated among peace researchers.
In CNN-aligned reporting, Machado praised U.S. naval deployments off Venezuela’s coast and described the Maduro government as a “criminal organization” threatening regional stability. She warned military leaders:
“Either they sink with Maduro and his criminal system, or they contribute to saving Venezuela and save themselves as well.” — CiberCuba coverage
What Nobel Actually Intended
Alfred Nobel’s will, signed in 1895, defines that his peace prize shall go to work:
“…the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
Machado’s record violates all three – while the Committee chairman twisted it beyond recognition to make it look like Ms Machado was relevant. Her calls for foreign military pressure, silence on the humanitarian impact of sanctions, and alignment with interventionist agendas stand in stark contradiction to Nobel’s vision.
Militarising Ourselves to Death
Global military expenditures are rising faster than at any point since 1945. Europe now invests more in weapons than in anything else. The Trump regime openly proposes military deployment to suppress domestic dissent. We are, de facto, militarising ourselves to death.
In this perilous moment, the Nobel Committee rewards someone who calls for military force. It deliberately ignores Nobel’s intent to reduce war and militarism.
From Laureates to Lobbyists
Machado joins a troubling lineage of laureates whose actions contradict the spirit of peace: Kissinger, Obama, the EU, and the Ukrainian human rights activists who advocated for more weapons imports.
Each award diluted the meaning of peace, replacing it with strategic symbolism and, as usual and without exception, aligned with US/NATO interests.
A Prize in Crisis – Time for an international legal investigation
The Nobel Peace Prize was meant to uplift those dismantling the machinery of war—not those seeking to recalibrate it. By honouring Machado, the Committee sends a dangerous message: that peace can be pursued through coercion, that sovereignty is negotiable, and that militarised resistance is worthy of global acclaim.
This year’s award is not just a misstep. It is a betrayal.
TFF calls for an independent legal investigation into the Nobel Committee’s repeated violations of its mandate. The Committee must be held accountable—and its work suspended until a verdict is reached.
Peace cannot be entrusted to those who confuse force with fraternity.
*****
The Lay Down Your Arms Foundation has just awarded its true-peace prize aligned with Nobel’s spirit and words to UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories to Francesca Albanese. But that does not get anything like the media attention this peace-betraying Committee does. You guess why…
Outsized and Eccentric: The Farce Behind
the Nobel Peace Prize
The fuss about the Nobel Peace Prize has always been excessively outsized to its relevance. Like most prizes, the panel is bound to have its treasure trove of prejudices and eccentricities in reaching any decision. Thin resumes have swayed the Norwegian committee to acts of dottiness. Surprising moments of dark humor have made an appearance in the awarding of the prize to warmongers and those antithetical to peace. And those on the Nobel Prize peace panel would barely cause a murmur of acknowledgment outside the spine-like length of that country of only 5.6 million inhabitants. (The current membership of five features, for instance, three politicians: Anne Enger, former leader of the country’s Center Party; former Conservative Party education minister Kristin Clement, and former state secretary of the Labor Party, Gry Larsen.)
Rather feebly, Asle Toje, another member of the five, uses a gastronomic metaphor in describing the selection process: “We do it pretty much the same way you make a good sauce – you reduce and reduce and reduce.” The reduction formula leads to surprising, rancid results. In 1973, the ruthless, toadying poseur Henry Kissinger was overcome with joy in receiving the prize. The National Security Adviser and US Secretary of State had supposedly done much to advance the cause of peace in the Indochina conflict by “spearheading cease-fire negotiations” that led to an armistice in January 1973. His co-awardee, the North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho, was far more sensible, refusing to accept a peace award where there was no peace to be had.
The choice of Kissinger was almost mockingly ghoulish. This was the same man who left his marks all over secret and illegal bombing campaigns in Laos and Cambodia during the Nixon administration, oversaw the extinction of democratically elected governments in Latin America in favor of murderous, authoritarian regimes, and spent his early academic career arguing that the United States might feasibly pursue small-scale nuclear war as a psychological lever.
The selection for 2025 was always going to be shadowed by the theatre known as the Donald Trump show. By claiming not to want it, the US President has done much to pad his credentials and make himself eligible. He has put on an incomplete, disputable show of halting conflicts while indulging in spells of violence (strikes on Venezuelan shipping, ostensibly carrying drugs to the US; the illegal bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities).
What the committee has done is the next best (or worse) thing. In opting for María Corina Machado, seen as the main figure of the Venezuelan opposition to the current government of Nicolás Maduro, they have offered the prize to a Trump medium. “I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support in our cause,” she cooed on X.
Almost hinting at something in the works – that is to say, the ongoing regime change agenda so enthusiastically sought by Washington – Machado was convinced of being “on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our principal allies to achieve freedom and democracy.” Given Latin America’s record on peaceful transitions from coups, this was fine humor indeed.
The award to Machado was, according to the Nordic wiseacres, based on her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” They go on to be didactic, talking about democracy being in global retreat, with Machado being its illuminating defender. (On being barred from running, she installed the surrogate opposition leader Edmundo González, who allegedly won the July 2024 election.)
This is the bromide of binary thought. Machado’s record, befitting most political records, is untidy. David Smilde, a student of Venezuelan politics, sees her as “a controversial pick, less a peace activist than a political operator willing to use some of the trade’s dark arts for the greater democratic good.” Even that might be generous.
For one thing, she is clearly biding her time, shunning local and regional elections, treating the honoring of the 2024 presidential election results as absolute. She has openly argued for the necessity of foreign intervention in removing Maduro and endorsed Trump’s military buildup in the Caribbean, calling the recent bombing of suspected drug boats a matter of “saving lives”.To remove Maduro was essential, she argues, because of his alleged credentials as “the head of a narco-terrorist structure of cooperation.”
Disingenuously, she has swallowed the dubious theory that Maduro is the true figure running the Tren de Aragua gang, which Trump accuses of directing operations against the United States. Her Vente Venezuela party has enthusiastically shared the threats by US officials against supposed Venezuelan drug traffickers on X. “If you’re in the Caribbean,” states one recent post, “if you’re north of Venezuela and you’re trying to traffic drugs to the US, you’re a legitimate target for the US.”
Machado is undoubtedly readying herself to step into any presidential vacancy, forced or otherwise. She claims to have a plan for the first 100 hours and the first 100 days of a transition process, promising to generate wealth for the country valued at $1.7 trillion over 15 years. Her advisor on international affairs, Pedro Urruchurtu, has been open about communicating with the Trump administration over Maduro’s removal.
Again, this says much about the eccentric reading of peace embraced by the insular Norwegian grandees. If Tom Lehrer was right to call political satire obsolete after Kissinger’s award, it would also be accurate to say that instances of rich farce have come in its wake.
When Maria Corina Machado Wins the Nobel Peace Prize, “Peace” Has Lost Its Meaning.
When I saw the headline Maria Corina Machado wins the Peace Prize, I almost laughed at the absurdity. But I didn’t, because there’s nothing funny about rewarding someone whose politics have brought so much suffering. Anyone who knows what she stands for knows there’s nothing remotely peaceful about her politics.
If this is what counts as “peace” in 2025, then the prize itself has lost every ounce of credibility. I’m Venezuelan-American, and I know exactly what Machado represents. She’s the smiling face of Washington’s regime-change machine, the polished spokesperson for sanctions, privatization, and foreign intervention dressed up as democracy.
Machado’s politics are steeped in violence. She has called for foreign intervention, even appealing directly to Benjamin Netanyahu, the architect of Gaza’s annihilation, to help “liberate” Venezuela with bombs under the banner of “freedom,” She has demanded sanctions, that silent form of warfare whose effects – as studies in The Lancet and other journals have shown – have killed more people than war, cutting off medicine, food, and energy to entire populations.
Machado has spent her entire political life promoting division, eroding Venezuela’s sovereignty, and denying its people the right to live with dignity.
This is who Maria Corina Machado really is:
- She helped lead the 2002 coup that briefly overthrew a democratically elected president, and signed the Carmona Decree that erased the Constitution and dissolved every public institution overnight.
- She worked hand in hand with Washington to justify regime change, using her platform to demand foreign military intervention to “liberate” Venezuela through force.
- She cheered on Donald Trump’s threats of invasion and his naval deployments in the Caribbean, a show of force that risks igniting regional war under the pretext of “combating narcotrafficking.” While Trump sent warships and froze assets, Machado stood ready to serve as his local proxy, promising to deliver Venezuela’s sovereignty on a silver platter.
- She pushed for the U.S. sanctions that strangled the economy, knowing exactly who would pay the price: the poor, the sick, the working class.
- She helped construct the so-called “interim government,” a Washington-backed puppet show run by a self-appointed “president” who looted Venezuela’s resources abroad while children at home went hungry.
- She vows to reopen Venezuela’s embassy in Jerusalem, aligning herself openly with the same apartheid state that bombs hospitals and calls it self-defense.
- Now she wants to hand over the country’s oil, water, and infrastructure to private corporations. This is the same recipe that made Latin America the laboratory of neoliberal misery in the 1990s.
Machado was also one of the political architects of La Salida, the 2014 opposition campaign that called for escalated protests, including guarimba tactics. Those weren’t “peaceful protests” as the foreign press claimed; they were organized barricades meant to paralyze the country and force the government’s fall. Streets were blocked with burning trash and barbed wire, buses carrying workers were torched, and people suspected of being Chavista were beaten or killed. Even ambulances and doctors were attacked. Some Cuban medical brigades were nearly burned alive. Public buildings, food trucks, and schools were destroyed. Entire neighborhoods were held hostage by fear while opposition leaders like Machado cheered from the sidelines and called it “resistance.”
She praises Trump’s “decisive action” against what she calls a “criminal enterprise,” aligning herself with the same man who cages migrant children and tears families apart under ICE’s watch, while Venezuelan mothers search for their children disappeared by U.S. migration policies.
Machado isn’t a symbol of peace or progress. She is part of a global alliance between fascism, Zionism, and neoliberalism, an axis that justifies domination in the language of democracy and peace. In Venezuela, that alliance has meant coups, sanctions, and privatization. In Gaza, it means genocide and the erasure of a people. The ideology is the same: a belief that some lives are disposable, that sovereignty is negotiable, and that violence can be sold as order.
If Henry Kissinger could win a Peace Prize, why not María Corina Machado? Maybe next year they’ll give one to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation for “compassion under occupation.”
Every time this award is handed to an architect of violence disguised as diplomacy, it spits in the face of those who actually fight for peace: the Palestinian medics digging bodies from rubble, the journalists risking their lives in Gaza to document the truth and the humanitarian workers of the Flotilla sailing to break the siege and deliver aid to starving children in Gaza, with nothing but courage and conviction.
But real peace is not negotiated in boardrooms or awarded on stages. Real peace is built by women organizing food networks during blockades, by Indigenous communities defending rivers from extraction, by workers who refuse to be starved into obedience, by Venezuelan mothers mobilizing to demand the return of children seized under U.S. ICE and migration policies and by nations that choose sovereignty over servitude. That’s the peace Venezuela, Cuba, Palestine, and every nation of the Global South deserves.
Nobel Committee Tried Its Best to Give Trump a Peace Prize
The Nobel Committee has frequently given the peace prize to major war makers, and frequently to do-gooders whose work in a variety of fields has been unrelated to abolishing war. It has also often given the prize to opponents and victims of the Western empire. But it has never given the prize to open advocates of war and fascistic government. Trump was never going to be given the prize directly.
Trump is not the right type of warmonger. Nobody could do it with a straight face. Zelensky was saying he’d support Trump for the peace prize if Trump were to send him long-range missiles with which to start World War III. Norway has been worried about what horrible things Trump might do upon failing to be given the prize. Trump has pushed NATO members into unprecedented levels of military spending, while fueling wars in Ukraine and Palestine, supporting Israeli warmaking around Western Asia, murdering the occupants of fishing boats, and declaring his right to attack Venezuela, and proclaiming his intention to practice for more wars using U.S. cities as training grounds. The Nobel Committee could not risk having him show up to accept its peace prize and denounce them for having some non-“white” people in the room or for having given the prize to someone he hates.
But the Nobel Committee did the next best thing, and must be hoping in vain that Trump manages to understand that. It gave the prize to an opponent of “the Venezuelan regime” and practically insisted on the Trumpian overthrow and takeover of Venezuela in the name of “democracy.” María Corina Machado may be a perfectly wonderful person. Her rights may have been horribly abused. The Venezuelan government, like most, may be deeply flawed. But only the slightest pretense was even made on Friday that Machado had anything to do with the cause for which the Nobel Peace Prize had been created. Instead, the presentation focused on demonizing the government of Venezuela. The drug-cartel excuse was missing. The oil explanation was missing. (Machado wants to privatize Venezuela’s oil for capitalist profiteers.) There was no direct advocacy for an invasion. But “democracy” was championed as having no greater hurdle before it than the existence of the current president of Venezuela. Machado has supported deadly sanctions against her own country and advocated for intervention.
Last year, the prize was a rare one in that it was actually related to peace. Hypocrisy and obliviousness are the norms. Alfred Nobel’s will, written in 1895, left funding for a prize to be awarded to “the person 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.” No mention was made of Machado having done any of those things at all.
Most winners in recent years have either been people who did nice things that had nothing whatsoever to do with the relevant work (Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai for promoting education, Liu Xiaobo for protesting in China, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for opposing climate change, Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank for economic development, etc.) or people who actually engaged in militarism and would have opposed the abolition or reduction of standing armies if asked, and one of whom said so in his acceptance speech (the European Union, Barack Obama, etc.). Of course, Henry Kissinger is remembered as a Nobel Peace laureate, while Gandhi never measured up.
The Nobel Committee outraged Trump because it gave the prize to U.S. President Barack Obama, who, after delivering the only pro-war Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech ever, went to Hiroshima and told everyone there, including the survivors of the nuclear bombs who would later get the prize, that nuclear weapons would not be eliminated in his lifetime. He then proceeded to peddle familiar pro-war myths.
Two years ago, the Nobel Committee awarded a peace prize that had Iran in the role of Venezuela. Since then, we have seen Iran bombed and threatened by the upholders of Western civilization.
There is no question that advocating for human rights is a good thing, or that doing so under an oppressive government is a courageous thing, or that doing so without hypocritically using violence is a wise thing. But the Nobel Peace Prize was created to support war abolition, not a random selection of good issue advocacy. And the practice of selectively awarding the prize to victims of the governments targeted by the U.S. military supports, rather than reduces, militarism.
Of the most oppressive governments on Earth, there are only a few not armed, trained, and supplied by the U.S. military, and only one with which the U.S. government had recently torn up an agreement that stalled the drive toward war in Washington.
The recipient of the 2023 prize, Narges Mohammadi, like her colleague and previous recipient Shirin Ebadi, opposed both abuses by the Iranian government and sanctions and threats of war from the U.S. government. But the awarding of the prize did not serve peace, and only strengthened senseless global division. Everyone knows that no Western political journalist prisoner, such as Julian Assange, would ever be given such a prize.
In 2022, with its eyes on the news of the day, there was no question that the Committee would find some way to focus on Ukraine. But it steered clear of anyone seeking to reduce the risk of the at-the-time relatively minor war escalating or creating a nuclear apocalypse. It avoided anyone opposing both sides of the war, or anyone advocating for a ceasefire, negotiations, or disarmament. It did not even make the choice one might have expected of picking an opponent of Russian warmaking in Russia and an opponent of Ukrainian warmaking in Ukraine. Instead, the Nobel Committee chose advocates for human rights and democracy in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. But the group in Ukraine was recognized for having “engaged in efforts to identify and document Russian war crimes against the Ukrainian civilian population,” with no mention of war as a crime or of the possibility that the Ukrainian side of the war was committing atrocities. The Nobel Committee may have learned from Amnesty International’s experience of being widely denounced for documenting war crimes by the Ukrainian side.
In 2021, the prize went to advocates for human rights in Russia and in the Philippines. In 2020, the prize went to the World Food Programme. In 2019, the prize went to the President of Ethiopia and claimed some relationship to peace as he had been part of a peace agreement. But he was a president and commander of a military and not in any need of funding or support. He had engaged in all sorts of violence and human rights abuses, so that an advocate for human rights in his country could be given the prize if the U.S. government’s relationship to that country changes.
The 2018 prize did not go after war itself, but did go after sexual violence in wars. Not bad, relatively speaking. The 2013 prize went after chemical weapons. But stretching back through the years, we see a common practice of most often awarding a peace prize to either actual warmakers or to advocates for good causes that are not peace, as well as the practice of using the prize for Western political purposes that are hostile to peace. Although virtually every topic can be tangentially connected to war and peace, the avoidance of actual peace activism intentionally misses the point of the prize’s creation by Alfred Nobel and the influence of Bertha von Suttner.
The Nobel Peace Prize has largely devolved into a prize for random good things that don’t offend a culture dedicated to endless war. It has been awarded for journalism, for working against hunger, for protecting children’s rights or women’s rights, for teaching about climate change, and for opposing poverty. These are all good causes and can all be connected to war and peace. But these causes should go find their own prizes.
The Nobel Peace Prize is so devoted to awarding powerful officials and avoiding peace activism that it is often awarded to the wagers of wars, including Abiy Ahmed, Juan Manuel Santos, the European Union, and Barack Obama, among others. At times, the prize has gone to opponents of some aspect of war, advancing the idea of reforming even while maintaining the institution of war. These awards have come closest to the purpose for which the prize was created, and include the 2017, 2018, and 2024 prizes.
The prize has also been used to advance the propaganda of some of the world’s major war makers. Awards like that of 2023 have been used to denounce violations of human rights in non-Western nations targeted in the weapons-funding propaganda of Western nations. This record allows Western media outlets each year to speculate before the prize announcement on whether it will go to favorite propaganda topics, such as Alexei Navalny. The awarding of the prize has done nothing in recent years to diminish warmaking, and has perhaps done the opposite, with prizes going to opponents of the Russian government prior to escalations of the war in Ukraine.
In 2021, at a moment when the world’s largest weapons dealer, most frequent launcher of wars, dominant deployer of troops to foreign bases, greatest enemy of the International Criminal Court and the rule of law in international affairs, and supporter of oppressive governments — the U.S. government — was trumpeting a division between so-called democracies and non-democracies, the Nobel Committee chose to throw gas on the fire, declaring:
“Since its start-up in 1993, Novaja Gazeta has published critical articles on subjects ranging from corruption, police violence, unlawful arrests, electoral fraud, and ‘troll factories’ to the use of Russian military forces both within and outside Russia. Novaja Gazeta’s opponents have responded with harassment, threats, violence, and murder.”
Also, given the prize that year was a journalist from the Philippines, already funded by CNN and by the U.S. government, in fact by a U.S. government agency often involved in funding military coups.
That there are always numerous candidates who plausibly meet the criteria of Alfred Nobel’s will each year and could have been appropriately awarded a Nobel Peace Prize has been established by the late great Norwegian peace activist Fredrik Heffermehl and by the War Abolisher Awards. World BEYOND War has created the War Abolisher Awards to fill the gap left by the Nobel Committee’s frequent abandonment of the cause of ending war.
UPDATE October 10, 2025:
Here are two videos of this year’s peace laureate asking for military invasion of her own country:
Here’s a letter from this year’s peace laureate asking for help from Israel’s military in overthrowing her government:
Link to original, World BEYOND War: https://worldbeyondwar.org/nobel-committee-tried-its-best-to-give-trump-a-peace-prize/
Never in a Million Years: Ten Reasons Why Trump Should Never Be Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
Who doesn’t know that President Donald Trump desperately wants a Nobel Peace Prize and said bitterly, “They will never give me a Nobel Peace Prize. It’s too bad. I deserve it, but they will never give it to me”?
And for once, he’s right. He won’t get one, but wrong, of course, that he deserves it. Actually, there are way more than 10 reasons why he doesn’t deserve such a prize, but as 10 is such a nice round number, let me use it.
As a political scientist who focuses on human rights, global racial justice, and social movements, I’ve given considerable thought to and conducted research on the Nobel Peace Prize. I once taught a course on the history and politics of that prize while a faculty member at American University’s School of International Service. Last year, I even spent time in Oslo at both the Nobel Peace Center museum and the Norwegian Nobel Institute, which houses many of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s documents, including, for example, original nomination letters that can be viewed and studied.
I was there doing research on the 1964 prize awarded to Martin Luther King Jr., and I read several of the original letters sent to the Committee nominating him. His main nomination came from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), which sent a letter dated January 31, 1963, that arrived after the January deadline for that year. His nomination was, however, carried over to 1964 and then he won.
As it turns out, I fall into one of the categories of those who can officially make such a nomination. They include members of “parliamentary assemblies” (or the U.S. Congress), previous Nobel Peace Prize Laureates like 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai or former Vice President Al Gore, directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes, members of international courts, members of the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee, and (relevant to me) university professors.
Although the Committee has never explicitly stated that such a thing is possible, I’m going to assume that I can also make an “un-nomination.” In fact, believe it or not, while there were many letters of support for Dr. King’s nomination, there were also letters asking the Committee to deny him the prize, even if most of them came from individuals ineligible to make (or unmake) a nomination.
And let me just say: I can think of no one more deserving of being un-nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize than President Donald Trump. His record of authoritarian and antidemocratic rule grows more dangerous and harmful by the day, not just for the United States but for the entire global community. And yet he has indeed been nominated by Republican sycophants in Congress who seek his favor, and global strongmen, including Gabon’s President Brice Oligui Nguema, who came to power thanks to a military coup, and Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev, who has been that country’s president for 22 years. They all understand that such recommendations appeal to his need for adulation and blunt any criticisms he may have of their own behavior.
The Nobel Committee does not, in fact, release information about each year’s determination, including all the individuals or groups nominated, until 50 years later, so the only way Trump and the world would know that Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, and others have indeed nominated him is if they publicly stated it or told him so.
Autocracy, Racism, and Lawlessness Are Not Qualifications
The award normally focuses on a nominee’s work in the previous year, which means Trump’s “peace” efforts during his first term and his time out of office won’t be considered for next year’s award. So, let’s examine his first eight months in office in 2025 and ask a basic question: What has Trump done so far this year to not deserve the award?
First, within hours of being back in office, the “peace” president pardoned and commuted the prison sentences of 1,500 insurrectionists who had rioted on his behalf on January 6, 2021. (Actually, those are 1,500 reasons for no Nobel Peace Prize right there!) Hundreds of those individuals violently attacked police officers with the goal of stopping the peaceful transfer of power to the legitimately elected Joe Biden. Rather than condemn their actions, Trump rewarded their (and his) lawlessness.
Second, in his immoral and racialized campaign against undocumented immigrants who, he claims, are “poisoning the blood of the country,” his administration has unlawfully kidnapped individuals off American streets and renditioned them to horrific gulags in El Salvador and elsewhere. Some had committed no crimes and were legally in the United States or even U.S. citizens.
Third, he shut down the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). That agency, founded in 1961, had spent decades providing humanitarian assistance to millions of people around the world. As Oxfam noted, with the elimination of USAID, “At least 23 million children stand to lose access to education, and as many as 95 million people would lose access to basic healthcare, potentially leading to more than 3 million preventable deaths per year.”
Fourth, he has deployed staff from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as the National Guard and other troops in Los Angeles, Washington, D. C., Chicago, and soon, it seems, to Memphis, Tennessee, and Portland, Oregon (supposedly to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities there “under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists”). In Los Angeles, he claimed that the city was also “under siege” by people protesting his immigration raids. In fact, it was the inhumane and violent actions of ICE under Trump’s orders that sparked resistance in Los Angeles. In Washington, he falsely and repeatedly stated that he was sending in troops to control widespread crime. That canard was cover for him to spread his anti-immigrant campaign to another “sanctuary city,” and to target the most vulnerable people there like the unhoused and scooter delivery riders. (A Washington judge did at least recently block him from speedy deportations of undocumented immigrants.)
Fifth, signaling his desire for a new imperialist era, he threatened to seize Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal. CNN identified at least nine lies of his as to why Canada should become this country’s 51st state, including that its citizens like the idea (they don’t); that it doesn’t allow U.S. banks to operate there (it does); and that it doesn’t “take” U.S. agricultural products (it’s second only to Mexico in purchasing such products). Trump not only declared that he wanted Greenland for “security” purposes but didn’t rule out using military force to get it. Mind you, Greenland is a self-governing territory of Denmark whose people and government have no interest whatsoever in becoming part of the U.S. Though built by the United States, the Panama Canal was ceded to Panama in a 1977 treaty signed by President Jimmy Carter and ratified by the Senate. Trump claims that the United States is not getting fair market treatment for its use. However, as one expert on the canal noted, Trump is insisting on preferential treatment and promising to take it back if he doesn’t get his way.
Sixth, in a brazen abuse of power, he demanded that Brazil stop the prosecution of his ally there, former President Jair Bolsonaro. Like Trump in 2021, Bolsonaro and his followers were unsuccessful in their violent attempt to stop a transition of power to then-elected President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva after Bolsonaro legitimately lost the 2022 election. Trump has called the trial a “witch hunt” and said he would impose a 50% tariff on Brazilian imports unless it was stopped and Bolsonaro freed.
Seventh, in another of his unconstitutional executive orders, he threatened two U.S. professors with legal penalties for working with or writing in support of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC (of which the United States is not a member) prosecutes war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, all of which have no statutes of limitation. Trump was rebuffed by two federal judges who concluded that he was violating the First Amendment right to free speech by stating that he would “impose tangible and significant consequences” on anyone supporting the ICC. It has evidently particularly upset him that the ICC has issued an arrest warrant for his partner in crime in the war on Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. About a dozen countries have stated that they would honor the warrant.
Eighth, Trump’s June bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran took place under distinctly dubious legal authority. That both lawmakers and scholars can’t even agree on whether the president flaunted the law or not suggests the carelessness of his actions when it came to legal procedures involving war. And despite Trump’s boast that he “completely and fully obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, reports from his own intelligence agencies suggest that the program was set back only a few months. Apparently embarrassed by the truth, War Department Secretary Pete Hegseth fired Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, who headed the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency that reported on the botched airstrikes.
Ninth, he withdrew the United States from critical international bodies, including the World Health Organization and UNESCO, as well as less well-known organizations like the Council of Europe’s European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) that works with 46 European governments and civil society organizations across the region to address issues of discrimination. I admit that the last one is a bit personal for me. From 2022 to 2025, I was the U.S.-appointed “independent expert” to that very commission and attended its meetings in Strasbourg, France. My appointment was approved by then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the Council of Europe. In January, I was informed that Trump was withdrawing the U.S. from its “observer” status on the commission because ECRI was not aligned with the values of the incoming administration. Sadly, that part was all too true.
Tenth, he is complicit in the genocide and famine taking place in Gaza. While his claims of ending seven wars are dubious at best, in the one conflict where he could most decisively have intervened to bring closure to it, he’s done anything but. His unholy alliance with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has meant a lot of performative concern about starvation and the tens of thousands of deaths in Gaza along with an unending supply of weapons for Israel. His insensitivity to the suffering of the people in Gaza has only been compounded by his disturbing desire to cleanse the area of Palestinians and develop what he’s called a “Riviera of the Middle East” there.
And mind you, I won’t even count President Trump’s “pathetic” groveling campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize as one of the reasons he shouldn’t get it. That seems almost self-evident. It reminds me of comedian Steven Wright’s joke: “I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.” It’s impossible to imagine Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, or Martin Luther King Jr. calling officials in Norway and begging for the prize as Trump recently did; or, for that matter, using his platform at the United Nations to falsely claim that “everyone says I should get the Nobel Peace Prize.” And mind you, that ludicrous claim came only weeks after his unlawful killing of multiple individuals with military strikes in the international waters of the Caribbean without due process or any legal recourse, not to speak of changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. “Everyone,” of course, meant almost nobody. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that 76% of Americans don’t believe that he deserves the award, including 49% of Republicans.
It’s inexplicable to me why former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton would cavalierly state that she would nominate Trump, the twice-impeached, 34-count convicted felon and adjudicated sexual abuser, for the prize if he brought a ceasefire to the war in Ukraine. By now, it should be crystal clear that Trump has no interest in Ukraine’s sovereignty, which he’s denigrated repeatedly, while proving all too willing to grant concessions to the universally recognized aggressor in that conflict, Russian President Vladimir Putin. But even if he did help broker a fair peace agreement, which the entire world (except Putin) wants as soon as possible, that shouldn’t excuse his broader autocratic behavior and agenda.
Note to Trump: The Award Must Be Earned
His authoritarian push to reshape the United States and demean all its governing, social, financial, and cultural institutions is itself a threat to peace. He continues to attack a free press, bully universities, ignore judicial orders, abuse the very principle of a separation of powers, and openly seeks to rig elections in his favor. Forget for the moment the fascism, authoritarianism, patrimonialism, retribution, bigotry, corruption, greed, mendacity, and incompetence — his one character trait that should be considered most disqualifying is his cruelty. His lust for revenge and power has brought unspeakable malice and pain to undocumented immigrants, LGBTQ families, federal workers, foreign students, and any number of individuals whom he feels have challenged him.
Trump is possibly the most unethical, petty, and vengeful president in American history. Compassion and empathy simply play no role in his character or makeup. After all, at the memorial for the assassinated Charlie Kirk, moments after his widow Erika Kirk called for forgiveness and stated that “the answer to hate is not hate,” Trump said, “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.”
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to “the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses.” He meets none of those criteria.
Let Trump continue to whine and play the victim as he manifests his doctrine of intimidation, bribes, and palling around with authoritarians. In the not-too-distant future, history will extensively document and abhor the outrages and inhumanity of the Trump era, recording it with the same disdain and dismay that now is used for the eras of slavery and segregation, or the McCarthy years. Let’s hope that the Nobel Peace Prize never becomes another institution that Trump disgraces and diminishes.
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