Eyes on the (Nobel) Prize

For all the talk of Ukraine’s mineral wealth, there is one rare earth material that President Trump craves above all else. Plated with 24 carat gold and weighing around 175 grams, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to just four US Presidents in history, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. 

It is the most recent of these recipients that so sticks in the craw of the current occupant of the Oval Office. “He had no idea why he got it and he was right about that because nobody else does either”, Trump told a campaign rally back in September in relation to Obama’s 2009 award. For his part, Obama was equally unsure as to why the committee awarded him the medal just 9 months into his presidency, joking that they gave out the prize to “just about anyone these days”.

That Trump never got to run against Obama will be an enduring regret - a contest he has repeatedly claimed he would have won. While his election to a second term in November brought the two men level on election wins, Trump still lacks the international respect that came so effortlessly to his younger rival. 

Nowhere does he see this international recognition symbolised more than in the receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, and nowhere does he see a clearer path to receiving this than in bringing an end to the war in Ukraine. 

While much of the coverage of Keir Starmer’s address at the White House on Thursday focused on his comments about trade and security, very little attention was given to an equally important element of his speech. During a passage in which the Prime Minister listed the UK and US’s achievements (top for universities, finance and golf) he slipped in that the two countries were “one and two for Nobel Prize winners”. 

This wasn’t a throwaway line, but likely a key element of what the UK delegation will have been discussing behind the scenes with the US administration. The logic follows like this - secure an American backed peace deal in Ukraine and the UK Government will bring its full weight to lobbying the Nobel Prize Committee on behalf of Trump. This goes a long way to explaining Trump’s completely uncontrolled and unacceptable dressing down of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office on Friday - he saw the Ukraine President as not “playing ball” and jeopardising his chances of winning the prize. 

As a man of infinite wealth and power there is little that Trump can’t buy. His “unprecedented second state visit” to the UK is one such thing, but a Nobel Prize would be something else altogether. How does he stand a chance of winning the much-coveted honour? It almost certainly doesn’t come from allowing unchecked Russian aggression against its neighbours or leaving Europe to fend for itself militarily.

So, does this mean a deal will eventually be struck? Any predictions when it comes to the famously unpredictable Trump are a fool’s errand, but there is just enough riding on this for him personally to give hope that a deal will eventually be struck. As he writes in his 1987 book The Art of the Deal “Deals work best when each side gets something it wants from the other”. If the price of peace in Europe is Trump ending up with a Nobel Peace Prize then that’s a deal worth doing, no matter how unpalatable it may be.