How Trump Turned the Nobel Peace Prize Into a Political Spectacle

The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarding the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has in itself been controversial. In their minds, she has been a courageous democrat resisting authoritarianism and deserves the prize. Her critics, however, argue against her pro-Israel stance, and the fact that her resistance against the Venezuelan government has been laced with violence. But the other problem is the global context where the President of the United States, Donald J Trump, has conducted a sometimes outlandish and over-the-top campaigning to be awarded the prize this year.For his sheer persistence, it is difficult not to feel sorry for Trump—president of the most influential and powerful country in the world, but who cannot have something that he so insistently desires. Perhaps only one country, self-assured and in some ways wealthier than the US, could do this: Norway, historically entrusted with awarding the annual prize.Trump Didn’t Win Nobel Peace Prize. Or Did He? Depends On Who You AskThere is a delicious irony in Machado getting the prize for promoting democracy in Venezuela. This is because Trump has been making war on the country. In recent months, he has positioned a naval fleet near Venezuela, and ordered the US military to destroy several fishing vessels, claiming that they were being used for drug smuggling.Machado fully supports Trump’s agenda of bringing regime change in her country on the pretext of narco-trafficking. She is a strong supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel, and it is not surprising that she has dedicated her Nobel Prize to the people of her country and to Trump “for his decisive support of our cause,” as she wrote on X.She said that her movement was on the threshold of victory and that “more than ever, we count on President Trump” as well as the American and Latin American people to achieve that goal.The White House response almost immediately after the announcement, however, was sharp. Spokesman Steven Cheung had declared “Once again, the Nobel Committee has proved they place politics over peace. [But] President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives. He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of will.”Trump himself bit the bullet manfully and declared later that “the person who got the Nobel Prize called me today and said ‘I am accepting this in honour of you because you really deserved it.'"Just how cynical things have gotten came through the news that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu also declared that Trump should have been given the prize because he "deserves it.” And not to be left behind that other advocate of peace, Russian President Vladimir Putin, the man who is making war in Ukraine, also chipped in by praising Trump’s peace efforts, and noting, “There have been cases when the Nobel committee awarded the prize to people who’ve done nothing for peace,” adding that that has "damaged the prize’s prestige.”Why Mahatma Gandhi Was Never Awarded the Nobel Peace PrizeAccording to Nobel’s will, the prize it to be awarded to the person who had in the previous year done the “most or best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition of standing armies, and the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Over time, other criteria has also been introduced, such as arms control and disarmament, promotion of democracy and human rights, the promotion of peace, and combating climate change. Also, the prize by tradition, implies not just peace deals, but consistent long-term advocacy.For years, Trump has campaigned—openly and insistently—for the Nobel Peace Prize. He has cited his role in brokering the Abraham Accords, claimed credit for mediating ceasefires in Gaza, and resolving conflicts between Israel and Iran, Cambodia and Thailand, India and Pakistan, Rwanda and Republic of Congo, and Armenia and Azerbaijan. He has been nominated by the Azeri, Armenian, Israeli, and Pakistani leaders, but despite these efforts, has has never come close to winning.But the same Trump has also militarised his own cities and is busy persecuting his domestic critics. He has made war on Iran and has facilitated the terrible war in Gaza. The ceasefire he engineered came just a day before the prize announcement, and the Nobel Committee usually closes nomination by 31 January. Between Trump and Machado, in that sense, there was no contest in their minds.One thing driving Trump has been the fact that four former Presidents of the US have been awarded the prize—Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama. It is no secret that the last-named awardee—Obama—rankles the most in Trump’s mind.The question is not just why he failed, but also what his repeated pursuit reveals about the prize itself—and about the modern spectacle of power in an age of performance politics.Peace, in Trump’s hands, has become a brand—a slogan as much as a policy. Like the buildings that bear his name, his diplomacy depended on visibility and self-promotion. The irony is that the Nobel Prize, though symbolic, demands the opposite: humility, endurance, and moral credibility.The Nobel Peace Prize, established in 1901, has always been political but its grammar is moral rather than transactional. Trump’s worldview reverses that equation. To him, peace is a transaction—a product of negotiation, leverage, and branding. When he cites the Abraham Accords, he speaks not of regional reconciliation or Palestinian sovereignty, but of a “historic deal”. His claim to peace lies in the spectacle of the announcement, not in the slow, painstaking work of building trust and justice.To its credit, the Nobel Committee appears to have understood the stakes. In choosing Machado over Trump, it reaffirmed that the prize is not a celebrity award or a reward for transactional diplomacy. It is a moral statement—imperfect, political, but still aspirational.In the past they have fumbled, such as when they gave the award to Henry Kissinger in 1973 for efforts to end the war which was eventually ended in 1975 by a North Vietnamese military victory. Then there was the prize to Barack Obama, judged premature by most observers and probably wrong-headed, given his aggressive covert campaign in Afghanistan. In recent years, the prize has gone to human rights activists like Narges Mohammadi and Ales Bialiatski; anti-nuclear campaigners like the Nihon Hidankyo organisation; and journalists like Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov.In the end, Trump’s pursuit of the Nobel Peace Prize is not just a curiosity, it is a mirror. It reflects a global culture where political image often substitutes for moral substance. Where social media encourages self-promotion and even peace is marketed like a product.Trump once said, “If I got the Nobel Peace Prize, they’d say it was a disgrace.” In that, at least, he was right: the disgrace would not have been his exclusion, but his inclusion.(The writer is a Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

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