WaPo Columnist: Trump Deserves the Nobel Peace Prize
- Summarize the WaPo column’s argument and context.
- Highlight Trump’s peace-related achievements and contrasts.
- Note the skeptical legacy of the Nobel and likely outcomes.
The Washington Post is not known for cutting Republicans slack, yet Marc A. Thiessen argued loudly that President Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. That claim forces a fresh look at a record many in the establishment refuse to credit. Whether Oslo agrees is another matter.
Thiessen’s piece points to the Abraham Accords as Trump’s headline achievement — four Arab-Israeli normalization deals that changed Middle East dynamics. Those accords broke the predictable Washington script that peace with Arab states depended entirely on a Palestinian deal. The result was pragmatic diplomacy that yielded tangible outcomes.
Not only does Donald Trump deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, but there has arguably never been an American president who deserved it more.
Four of his predecessors have won the prize. Barack Obama won seven months into his presidency essentially for not being George W. Bush — and even he said he didn’t deserve it. Woodrow Wilson won for creating the League of Nations, which proved to be a feckless disaster that the United States never even joined. Theodore Roosevelt won for ending a single conflict, the Russo-Japanese War, which began with Japan’s 1904 attack on the Russian fleet in Manchuria (Japan later launched a full invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and then a surprise attack on the U.S. in 1941). Jimmy Carter won in 2002, more than two decades after leaving the White House, for a lifetime of work in peacemaking, beginning with the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt.
Thiessen reminds readers that past laureates include winners whose records looked different in hindsight. The Nobel has a mixed legacy, from laudable diplomats to controversial picks like Yasser Arafat. That mixed history explains some of the skepticism around awarding another president.
Contrast this with Trump’s record. In his first term, Trump brokered not one, not two, not three, but four Arab-Israeli peace accords — the first such agreements in more than a quarter-century. He did it by rejecting the failed conventional wisdom of the foreign policy establishment, which said that there could be no separate peace without the Palestinians and that moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and confronting Iran’s aggression would inflame the region and put peace out of reach. Those moves did the opposite. The Abraham Accords alone were an achievement worthy of a Nobel Prize.
Beyond the Middle East, Thiessen credits Trump with brokering agreements or calming tensions in other hotspots, from Central Africa to Southeast Asia. The president also pursued a hard stance toward Iran that supporters argue removed a major nuclear threat. Those actions, taken together, make a persuasive case to conservatives who value concrete results.
Still, the Nobel committee is political and unpredictable; Oslo may choose to ignore the argument entirely. Nobel or not, however, Trump’s supporters see a track record of negotiated outcomes and regional shifts that deserve credit. Labels from Oslo won’t change the practical effects on the ground.
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