Oh, he’s not going to like this… or is he?

Yeah, the Nobel Peace Prize for this year has just been announced and… Trump didn’t get it. For all his insistence that he deserves it for the work he’s apparently done in “seven unendable wars”—the phrase he used at the UN general assembly recently—including at least one that hadn’t actually started, and others where the countries involved have disputed his role in whatever happened between them, for all his insistence, I say, that he deserves one, he missed out. Part of that, it should be said, is because nominations for the prize actually closed in February so he couldn’t actually have won for anything he did this year. And part of that is because, well, this Guardian article just says it:

Pakistan has said it will recommend Donald Trump for the Nobel peace prize for his work in helping to resolve the recent conflict between India and Pakistan.
The move, announced on Saturday, came as the US president mulls joining Israel in striking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Yeah. The NPP kind of depends upon you actually promoting peace, and I don’t know if acts of aggression against a sovereign nation count as that, even if it’s to stop that nation making war against you. Anyway, to give him some credit, he does seem, or at least claims, to have had some hand in getting the current Israel/Hamas ceasefire going (I was wrong about that a couple of weeks ago, and I’m happy to have been wrong, of course; forgive me if I’m still a bit cynical about it actually lasting long, though), but it’s hard to say how much of that is down to him versus how much might be due to other countries putting potential economic pressure on Israel (e.g. Spain’s recent decision to criminalise selling them weapons).

There’s also a certain irony in this year’s recipient being Venezuelan, too, given recent rumours that Mushroom Cock might be looking at moving in there militarily to do some regime change, and given the regime’s recent propensity for blowing Venezuelan boats out of the water on the pretext that they were carrying drugs without offering any proof that they were, of course. (Again, not quite a peaceful act.) But apparently him and Maria Machado actually get on to some degree, and there may be at least some ideological overlap; her party apparently likes to think of it as neither left nor right as such but others seem to consider it centre-right at best. Granting that Nicolas Maduro is undeniable scum, I still wonder how much better the opposition might be.

So Krasnov might not actually be too bothered by losing this year? I don’t know. He still wants one, cos he can’t accept not having one when that darkie did, and Obama’s prize was, let’s face it, about as questionable as Trump getting one would be. Norway—which, for reasons no one really understands, is the country that gives out the NPP while Sweden gives out all the others—has been wondering how he might react, though:

Kirsti Bergstø, the leader of Norway’s Socialist Left party and its foreign policy spokesperson, said Oslo must be “prepared for anything.”
“Donald Trump is taking the US in an extreme direction, attacking freedom of speech, having masked secret police kidnapping people in broad daylight and cracking down on institutions and the courts. When the president is this volatile and authoritarian, of course we have to be prepared for anything,” Bergstø told the Guardian.
“The Nobel Committee is an independent body and the Norwegian government has no involvement in determining the prizes. But I’m not sure Trump knows that. We have to be prepared for anything from him.” […]
The newspaper columnist and analyst Harald Stanghelle speculated that retribution from Trump – if it were to come – could take the form of tariffs, demands for higher Nato contributions or even declaring Norway an enemy.
“He [Trump] is so unpredictable. I don’t want to use the word ‘fear’ but there is a feeling that it could be a challenging situation,” he said. “It’s very very difficult to explain to Donald Trump or to many other countries in the world that it is a totally independent committee because they do not respect this kind of independence.”
He said if Trump were to win, it would be the “biggest surprise in the history of the Nobel peace prize”.

I don’t think anyone will dispute that. So far I see no comment from him on the NPP, but as I said he might be willing to tolerate losing it this time. Next year, though, if this Gaza ceasefire actually does hold somehow, I fear they’ll feel obliged to let him have it then, if only to shut him up for a while…