Chauvinist Trump’s Nobel dreams

The US President, Donald Trump, is a clown of the first order. This was proved once again when he announced at a recent news conference to declare a national emergency that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had written a ‘beautiful’ letter nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace prize. Trump also reminded the nation that Obama got the Nobel Prize for 'being in the White House for 5 seconds’.

Only, it has now emerged that it was Trump himself who requested Abe to write the letter to the Swedish Academy asking him to nominate the former to the coveted prize. A businessman he is, it is only expected of him to buy things that he likes. And so, Trump now wants to buy Nobel, perhaps. Trump was being at his Trumpiest playing his now familiar role of the old man at the bar sounding off about the world's ills, the media caught him immediately red-handed.

Trump should be given a Nobel Prize? For what? For his wild detours into the virtues of the death penalty? For his trade war with China? For his 'fake news' remarks? For barking at reporters? And so, he claims he was sought to be nominated by Abe for his peace initiatives with North Korea. He thinks he most certainly deserves it more than Obama who “was so close to starting a big war with North Korea”.

The fantasia of the Trumpland goes beyond this. He thinks he has saved three million lives by preventing Russia, Iran and Syria who were going to go and destroy three million people in order to get 45,000 terrorists. Who told him so? Well, he himself explained that he “heard it from a woman who had her parents and her brothers living there”. But Trump alone does not deserve the Nobel, if at all. It could be one Xi of China, an Erdogan of Turkey, even General Bajwa for his beautiful hug given to Siddhu...Nobel is not just given because one initiates a process.

It is the cumulative effort of all these processes that leads to it. More than any, Siddhu, will be the right nominee for the coveted prize compared to Trump in that order. Donald Trump believes in himself more. That is the problem. He has deepened trade wars, walked away from the Iran nuclear pact, pulled out of the Paris Climate Change Accord, exacerbated tensions with NATO allies, rolled back improving ties with Cuba, separated immigrant children from their parents at the border and rubbed salt on Palestinians' wounds by recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

In brief, he has played fast and loose with many fundamental assumptions about diplomacy, society and civility. Why should he expect that such a regressive activity of his should be recognised with such a Nobel Prize? Alfred Nobel who instituted the prize, had declared that “the prize shall be conferred on someone who, in the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind”. Alas, who knows, he may even be conferred with one for making a recalcitrant North Korea even talk about its nuclear programmes. Strange world, this is!