President Donald Trump was nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for the peace agreement he helped facilitated between Israel and the UAE. The agreement, announced in August, is expected to produce normal relations between the two countries.
The deal is reminiscent of the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel (1978) and the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO (1990’s). In both cases, parties involved in negotiating the deals received the Nobel Peace Prize.
“As it is expected, other Middle Eastern countries will follow in the footsteps of the UAE [and] this agreement could be a game-changer that will turn the Middle East into a region of cooperation and prosperity,” wrote Christian Tybring-Gjedde in his letter nominating Trump for the award.
Tybring-Gjedde is a member of the Norwegian Parliament and chairman of the Norwegian delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. He nominated Trump for the award in 2018 based on his historic meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, but the award ended up going to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad.
In nominating Trump, Tybring-Gjedde also highlighted the president’s role in easing tensions between India and Pakistan and between North and South Korea, as well as his efforts to force North Korea to surrender its nuclear arsenal. Tybring-Gjedde also praised Trump’s commitment to bringing thousands of US troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and pointed out that Trump is the first US president since Jimmy Carter to avoid starting a war or sending the US into an international armed conflict.
“I think [Trump] has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize winners,” said Tybring-Gjedde during an interview with Fox News. “The Committee should look at the facts and judge him on the facts – not on the way he behaves sometimes…The people who have received the Peace Prize in recent years have done much less than Donald Trump. For example, Barack Obama did nothing.”
President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his so-called “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” At the time, he seemed just as surprised by the award as everyone else. Even his supporters didn’t think he deserved the award.
“I think the Peace Prize was given to Obama because the Nobel Peace Committee leader was very flattered and also very impressed by Obama’s speeches and how he behaved during his first month in office as a president,” said Tybring-Gjedde. “Also, he was the first Black president. That was also an achievement in itself…but I think that is not what the Peace Prize Committee should consider.”
Essentially, the Nobel Committee gave Obama the prize based on what they thought he could do, not for what he had actually done. As we know, Obama would go on to fail in Syria, to fail the Palestines, and to fail the Middle East. He failed to confront China and Russia and he signed a disastrous nuclear deal with Iran that threatened the entire world.
The Nobel Committee thought the award would “strengthen Obama and it didn’t have [that] effect,” wrote Geir Lundestad, a non-voting member of the Nobel Committee.
The Nobel Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, a group of five members appointed by the Norwegian Parliament. There are 318 candidates for this year’s prize. The winner of the 2021 prize will be announced in October 2021.
Editor’s Note: The Nobel Prize has historically been about achievement. Obama’s Nobel Prize was about “potential” and it tainted the Prize as being political, and indicated that it was no longer about accomplishment as much as it was to keep with the liberal narrative.
Trump’s accomplishment in getting the first Arab country to recognize Israel is a momentous accomplishment that no one else has been able to do. If he does not get the Nobel Prize, it will prove that the Nobel Prize committee is truly a bigoted and irrelevant organization.