How Trump Could Win, and Deserve, a Nobel Peace Prize
Averting a nuclear arms race with successful talks among the US, Russia and China is something that the president might just pull off.
Going anti-nuclear?
Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty Images
It’s no secret that Donald Trump is obsessed with winning the Nobel Peace Prize, which is one reason why he’s pushing Ukraine and Russia so hard toward cease-fire negotiations. The way the US president is going about it won’t earn him any favor in Oslo, though, because so far he mainly seems to be coercing Ukraine to capitulate. But Trump has another path to the Nobel, and the whole world, including his haters, should root for him: He could win it by lowering the risk of nuclear Armageddon.
In his first term, Trump tried and failed to launch trilateral talks among the US, Russia and China about capping or even reducing nuclear weapons. (The US and Russia each have more than 5,000 nukes, while China, in third place, has about 600 and is racing to pull even with the other two.) Trump had already withdrawn from one arms-control treaty with Russia and then refused to renew the only remaining one, leaving the extension to his successor, Joe Biden. But even that agreement, called New START, expires next February.