The Nobel Peace Participation Trophy.
Should Donald Trump get the Nobel Peace Prize if his efforts to denuclearize North Korea work out? Liberal commentators keep getting asked the question. You start to wonder if it’s some sort of test.
The pundits hem and haw. It almost sounds like they’re pretty sure the answer is no, but don’t want to say that for fear of jinxing an actual peace deal.
Luckily I’m not writing for The Times or speaking on CNN. If the tens of you reading this small essay promise not report back to Trump and risk cheesing him off so he scuttles the meeting in Korea, I’ll give the question the in-depth thought it deserves.
To begin with, there is this. People who win a Nobel Prize are referred to as Nobel laureates. You might ask in what universe is this a handle we can seriously apply to Donald Trump. The word might need to acquire an asterisk, and be spoken with air quotes from hence forward.
Still the bar is set low for the Trump presidency. Maybe it’s sufficient that he and Kim Jong-un have gotten this far into the second year of his presidency without annihilating a significant portion of humanity. In this scenario we reduce the Nobel Peace Prize to something akin to the participation trophy your kid gets in soccer even though he has zero talent for the actual game.
Or, maybe we take our cue from the Cohen Brothers’ film The Big Lebowski. The narrator says of its shambling, bathrobe-clad protagonist The Dude: “Sometimes there’s a man, well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there.”
After all these years of an unresolved state of war, withering economic sanctions and insanely brutal dynastic politics in the north, the Winter Olympics comes to the Korean peninsula. The two Koreas merge their hockey teams, Kim Jong-un’s sister sits next to a frigid Mike Pence at the closing ceremony, and suddenly our impulsive president finds himself thrown into a historic moment while the rest of us hold our breath and hope no one drops a lit cigarette into the gasoline.
We can call this The Big Lebowski argument for a Nobel prize. The crowds chanting “Nobel! Nobel!” at Trump rallies might buy it. I’m not sure the Nobel Committee should. Of if they do, it only seems right for the prize to be a three-way deal shared by Trump, Kim Jong-un and the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in.
The least absurd argument is that Trump does legitimately deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. The will of Alfred Nobel says the prize goes to “The person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Clearing nuclear weapons out of a nation that’s still technically in a state of war with the rest of us and run by a brutal dictatorship would fit that description.
I could buy this argument if Trump satisfies two technicalities.
One, the president actually pulls off the peace agreement every one’s been speculating about. Only in our Fox News warped alternative reality could this whole Nobel Prize idea have gotten so far ahead of any actual agreement. Mr. Trump may yet discover that the crazier fox is Mr. Kim.
Two, Donald Trump prove himself a man of peace. Someone fit to join the likes of Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and Malala Yousafzai in the pantheon of Nobel laureates.
Peace is the pursuit of a lifetime, not some zero-sum contest where you emerge the victor, collect your prize, then hit the golf course. Peace comes when people find within themselves a place of courage and sacrifice, not fear and bullying. Throughout history the warriors who’ve made peace tend to emerge from the process a changed person.
I would think the Nobel Committee would want to see some physical evidence Donald Trump understands this. There are a lot of ways for that to happen, if Donald Trump is truly serious about wanting a Nobel. He could lay off with the whole “FAKE NEWS” thing. Honest journalism is an important force for peace. He could call B.S. on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s lame presentation of 15-year-old intelligence data in an attempt to wreck the Iran nuclear deal. Trading one nuclear crisis for another isn’t going to help the president’s case. He could travel to the Mexican border and welcome the caravan of refugees seeking asylum after fleeing the violence in Central America. You get the idea.
The Nobel Peace Prize ought to come with some minimal assurance that the recipient isn’t going to turn around the next day and send out adumb Tweet that leaves it forever tarnished.
Come to think of it, foreswearing Twitter and bringing some dignity to his diplomacy would be an excellent start. Mr. Kim gives up his nukes. Mr. Trump gives up his Twitter account. The world rejoices. That’s an argument for a Trump Nobel I could get behind.
