Donald Trump has been nominated by 18 Republicans for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, but is he a deserved receiver of the award that has been awarded to the likes of Nelson Mandela? The Republican lawmakers have written in their letter that it is Trump’s “peace through strength policies” that are bringing peace to the Korean peninsula and that his “tireless work” towards peace in this world deserves recognition.

However, it can be said that and the potential of peace to the region is in spite of Donald Trump’s foreign policy jibes at North Korea.

After decades of escalation and demonisation by western powers, the North is eventually seeking reconciliation with the South.

Peace in the Korean peninsula?

I have written before about the brief history of why North Korea sought to arm themselves with nuclear weapons. In 2003, George Bush scrapped the 1994 agreement that saw North Korea restart its suspended nuclear weapons program two years later. Furthermore, with western powers including them in the axis of evil, they had a genuine concern that they could end up with the same fate as Iraq and Libya. The documents discovered by North Korean hackers in 2016 contained evidence that the US had been planning a ‘regime change’ in NK and assassinate Kim Jong-un, thus they had every right to feel concerned.

On 28th April, Kim Jong-Un and his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in, met in the demilitarised zone, the first time in 60 years that a north korean leader had done so, to start negotiations to bring a formal end to the 1950-53 conflict, along with denuclearisation to the region. After which, the Republicans and Donald Trump supporters began talking about how this was down to Trump’s policies and his show of strength to the secret state.

But it was Trump himself that almost brought a war to the region because, after his war of words with Kim Jong-Un, White House officials were contemplating striking the country.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in thinks US President Donald Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the standoff with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program, according to a South Korean official.

This disregards entirely the idea that North Korea had only developed missiles that could react to a strike from the US in the first place and that the Korean war was exacerbated by US-led United Nations intervention, which eventually led to the splitting of the Korean peninsula and the stand-off between the north and the US since. Furthermore, North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Un, stated that they would only get rid of their nuclear weapons if the safety of the country could be given.

Undeserving nomination

Donald Trump himself has played very little role in the potential of peace within the region and some may claim that his nomination for a peace prize is an insult to the likes of Nelson Mandela, who fought for the struggle of his people during the apartheid in South Africa, where he was branded a terrorist by the US and the west and imprisoned for much of his life.

In fact, Donald Trump caused an escalation of tensions between the nations that could have easily swung the other way but Trump himself is merely a symptom of US violent imperial foreign policy.

His role was not peace but the uncensored political leader that has highlighted the lengths that western powers will go to maintain the status quo; something that many people didn’t want to believe. Donald Trump has not been and probably will never be a man of peace. His apparent strength only made things worse and his government’s continuation of support of Saudi Arabia’s campaign in Yemen, the Israeli apartheid that is violently oppressing the Palestinians, the threat of sanctions on Iran and America’s campaign in Syria to aid ISIL and rebel groups for the violent removal of Assad, only assert that no American President should have ever received the Nobel Peace Prize.