Another effort is afoot to get inside a president’s head with a Nobel Peace Prize. It worked out very poorly the last time, when the leftist Norwegians who dole out the award gave it to Barack Obama before he had done a single thing. And the continuing chatter about President Trump winning the prize can only lead to something very, very bad, like a dangerously flawed deal with North Korea. As Trump heads off to Singapore to negotiate with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, it’s time to silence such talk.
Preemptively awarding to Obama the Nobel Prize was not some quirky indulgence. It was a brilliant effort by Norwegian peaceniks to put themselves in charge of U.S. foreign policy. The Nobel Peace Prize committee in Oslo put the medal around Obama’s neck. And then they used it to tie his hands.
It’s impossible to tell the extent to which Obama’s disastrous foreign policy was the result of the expectations placed on him by winning the peace prize or his own inner Neville Chamberlain. But the results are there for all to see: A red line drawn in Syria on the use of chemical weapons and then a pusillanimous retreat from vows to do something about it, accompanied by a decision to invite the Russians back into the Middle East; a “peace” deal with Iran that allows the ayatollahs a green light to restart their nuclear program by the end of the next decade; a failure to provide enough troops to finish the Afghan war; neglect of the rising ISIS threat until it had swept across Mesopotamia; normalized relations with the Cuban dictatorship with little to show for it in return; misjudgment of the threat from Russia; using just enough military might in Libya to leave it an anarchic playground for Islamists; and yes, craven acquiescence to North Korea’s nuclear buildup that kicked the can down the road to Trump.
Obama’s benign intentions have resulted, as peace through weakness will, in a more dangerous and violent world.
It is hard to think that the peace prize influenced none of this. It was an act of manipulation to which Obama should never have acquiesced and that had to have made it more difficult to rev up America’s massive fighting machine and use it to good effect. The incentive was created to settle things without recourse to violence, and U.S. foreign policy is warped in the process.
And that is the current danger. Trump has worked the Korea issue masterfully. He has credibly convinced the world that he is willing to use force to halt North Korea’s relentless drive to enlarge its nuclear stockpile and place it on intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach U.S. cities, an existential peril for the United States.
[Related: Give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize, says South Korean president]
Given North Korea’s history, it is likely Kim simply wants to buy time to finish his nuclear ICBM project before Trump literally blows it up. Any “peace” deal must be completed quickly, be thoroughly verifiable, and include the removal of Kim’s entire nuclear capability. That will require undiluted implacability on the part of Trump and continued willingness to walk away and go to war. The prospect of winning a Nobel Peace Prize can only interfere with the need for Churchillian clarity about the aims of the enemy.
Kim is a viper who cannot be defanged and most likely needs his head cut off. Short of that, his cage must be very sturdy indeed.
On a positive note, Trump, though more than susceptible to flattery, is a product of the rough and tumble Manhattan real estate world and likely not as impressed by a Nobel Peace Prize as the equally egocentric but more cosmopolitan and internationalist Obama. Trump would be far more angered at being taken to the cleaners by Kim than he would be gratified by a prize from a panel of Europeans.
Obama probably wears his peace prize to bed over his pajamas every night. Trump would put his on display in his New York office next to a photo of him and Ray Kroc.
But no one doesn’t want a Nobel prize. And whetting Trump’s appetite for one can only lead to a bad deal and North Korean nuclear weapons one day dropping out of the sky and onto the United States.
Veteran White House reporter Keith Koffler (@keithkoffler) is the author of Bannon, Always the Rebel and the editor of White House Dossier.
