The Nobel Peace Prize 2020
nobelprize.org
nobelprize.org
Malala does seem to be handling it well, so what do I know.
Member states may have "certain [...] rights deriving from the application of the Treaties to the Member State in question, including the voting rights of the representative of the government of that Member State in the Council" suspended, but "The obligations of the Member State in question under the Treaties shall in any case continue to be binding on that State." (Article 7 TEU)
The only way for a member state to cease being a member state is through the withdrawal process in Article 50 TEU (i.e. like Brexit).
In this day and age, a single person having this level of impact on the world is rare. They might be the figure head, but there is usually a team behind the figure head that finally implements it. The team also deserve the recognition.
[1] aka 'The Blue Helmets' https://i.ytimg.com/vi/d-2uMYBSL68/maxresdefault.jpg
Good. Giving recognition to often overlooked efforts like this is completely deserved and worthy of this prize.
> I recently attended a talk at Stanford by Walter Bradford Ellis, a too-little-known activist and writer on the issue of global poverty and world hunger.
https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2019/10/14/WFP-Unite...
The only genuine force withdrawal he did was in Syria, which will damage the US dramatically going forward because they completely abandoned their allies because Erdogan was able to sweet talk Donald Teump.
And the “peace deals” are a joke because they were signed between Israel and countries that were never hostile towards each other in the first place. UAE and Bahrain? It was simply Trump paying UAE/Bahrain your tax dollars for them to formally announce something that has always been the case, and Bibi doing the same so that Trump could continue to allow him to annex Palestinian land in peace to satisfy the most orthodox people in his country who are keeping him in power and saving him from prosecution.
And yeah, supplying arms to the Saudis so they can continue slaughtering the Yemenis and unilaterally breaking a peace deal so Iranians can die in massive numbers are not starting a war, but is causing civilian death tolls that are extremely high.
And sure, creating massive instability and allowing China to run free in most of Asia and Africa is also not starting a war, but is completely weakening the US and emboldening China in ways we couldn’t have imagined 5 years ago (for all his anti China talk, Trump has been remarkably weak against them, which isn’t surprising considering that until January the highlight of his tenure was gonna be a joke of a trade deal with China, and that he spent years without touching trade with China but slapping tariffs on all the US’s allies).
And of course, dismantling treaties with Russia, such as the open skies treaty for example, which was a completely one sided treaty in favor of the US and its allies only served to increase the risk of war.
And how about jumping into peace talks between S Korea and N Korea (S Korea’s new President was elected on the explicit platform of trying to restart peace discussions with N Korea) and derailing the entire process, by giving Kim exactly what he wanted...a photo op with the US president which he could promote within his own country, without getting anything in return (I guess the love letters from Kim to Donald Trump was something).
And we haven’t even gotten to the part where he and his have explicitly and implicitly supported and emboldened white supremacists in the US and Europe.
Donald Trump is best looked at as someone who never boiled the water, but definitely turned up the temperature so it’s hitting close to 190. He has taken decades of goodwill and trust, and burned it so he could claim minor victories which hurt the US massively but can be something for him to crow about.
It requires an extremely narrow way of looking at the world (at basically the PR level) to think Donald Teump is even close to being net positive for world peace.
This checks out - pretty much everything being posted by Trump fans in this thread is a rewording of the PR spin we see Twitter bots spamming everywhere.
Comparing Trump's hateful rhetoric of his opposition to How obama conducted himself is a bad joke.
But I can't remember the last time a president didn't put troops somewhere. Ironically he's getting a lot of hate for pulling out of Syria/Germany.
Can you give an example of him being respectful or understanding of democrat policy or politicians?
He has called fascists good people. He has called Mexican immigrants rapists. He has called other countries shitholes. He has recognized the illegal move by Israel to have Jerusalem as their capital (one of the only countries in the world to do so!). He refuses to endorse BLM, one of the largest popular movements in decades, and has sent armed forces to crash peaceful protests. He has escalated deportations even more. He has continued and increased Obama's assassination programs in the middle east, even assassinating a high foreign dignitary on another country's soil. He has repeatedly downplayed and refused to manage the greatest medical and economic emergency in almost 100 years, with consequences that will be visible for the next 20 years.
I'm not a fan of Trump's personality, but on HN, can't we be intellectually honest about politics?
The statements above are not in fact what he said if you allow him any honest amount of context.
But for the second one he has stated 'When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.' I don't know how you can read this other than as a statement that most Mexican immigrants are drug delaers/users, criminals or rapists.
Politicians like to be recognized as "great" and a the Nobel Peace Prize does appeal to many. Trump's desire is a good example. If you avoid controversial figures, you avoid using the prize as a motivator exactly where you need it.
For example, Begin/Sadaat and Arafat/Rabin. The first peace worked out. The second one didn't. But, all four of these people led a pretty violent life as militaristic and nationalistic leaders. They're all extremely controversial in the middle east, and in their own countries.
I definitely don't think avoiding divisive political figures is a good. thing. That said, I don't think he's earned one.
If the UAE/Baharin normalization with Israel is on that list, them remove it. Getting two countries, who are not in conflict, to acknowledge each other and begin a formal relationship is definitely not a peace deal. A peace deal needs to involve the warring parties, which this did not.
It's astounding to me that people hate Trump so much that they refuse to recognize the historicity of this moment. We're seeing a fundamental change in the dynamics of a conflict that has been ongoing for generations, and there's no denying that a huge impetus for that change has been a rethinking of how to solve the problem by the Trump administration.
There was no big win here, Bahrain & UAE already had relationships with Israel, they were not in conflict. At best it can be described as possibly a small contributing factor to a future solution, if many other, much bigger and more relevant arrangements can be made. In reality not much has progressed. If anything, the few handshakes and promises made were a smokescreen for the unhappy status quo to go on as it was before.
For a long time the two conflicts were sort of interlinked, in that the Palestinians were used as both a rallying point and a pawn in the more general Arab/Israel conflict. Part of the significance of the UAE/Bahrain deals is an ongoing de-linking of the two conflicts.
As a concrete example of a substantive changes that will actually affect the lives of a number of people that have happened recently in the larger Arab/Israel context, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are now generally allowing flights from Israel through their airspace. This and the other recent liberalization steps are worth considering in the context of the situation described in https://ewerickson.substack.com/p/the-peace-deal-is-a-big-de..., where quite recently references to Israel were routinely censored in textbooks and encyclopedias in the UAE.
It's a big change from that to where we are now, and importantly it's a lot harder to sustain hostility against people you interact with on a daily basis than against a mysterious and vilified "other" that you never experience in person. So to the extent that easier travel leads to the travel actually happening, a practical effect of the sort of normalization of relations we are seeing could be a reduction in hostility "on the ground". Though that's likely to take a generation or three; these things are slow to change.
Now how much credit _Trump_ should get for any of this, I dunno; I wasn't in those conversations. But I also don't think people should claim that the changes here are not important just because they (for excellent reasons!) dislike Trump.
Which will be very unpalatable for the wider Arab community, and suddenly we will be back to square one.
I see no realistic solutions, unfortunately.
As for Trump, I know many who can acknowledge that thankfully he has not started any wars, yet see him as incredibly dangerous to the US, and by extension, the world. When the US shrugs, the world trembles.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1978/ceremony-speech...
Also, it was, quite reasonably, given to Sadat and Begin, not Carter.
Man, people are really buttmad because Trump didn't turn out to be as much of a warmonger as, say, Obama. Count your blessings; he's done fine on foreign policy where it counts.
But then it's lacked credibility from the start. Nobel only funded it to help rebrand his anticipated legacy, to offset being remembered as "le marchand de la mort".
Here is the first link I get returned for Obama Peace Prize"
https://nypost.com/2019/11/02/why-obama-got-a-nobel-peace-pr...
It even says: “It is true, Obama did not do much before winning,” Lundestad, 74, a member of Norway’s Nobel Committee until 2014, told The Post.
Second link I got returned is this: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34277960
"Nobel secretary regrets Obama peace prize"
The deadline for nominations was eleven days after his inauguration. What did he do in those eleven days — other than not being Mr. Bush — that made him merit the prize?
Seriously, when I saw the headline here on HN I thought, 'oh sheesh, what now?' and was pleasantly surprised to see it go to a deserving organisation this year. That is how poor their decision 11 years ago was: over a decade later and I view the award with suspicion.B
Stalin and Hitler both graced the cover at various points in time.
The prize going to political leaders has been a mixed bag. Aung San Suu Kyi didn't turn out, for a recent example. The Arafat/Rabin choice seems poor in retrospect, but ATT it would have seemed like a similar choice to Begin/Sadaat a few years earlier. The latter peace did work out.
None of these people were pure white snow. All four were aggressive, militaristic nationalists for all their life. They all made peace though, or tried.
These are the kinds of choices that make the Peace Prize actually active. Politicians seek recognition, usually. I think venerating them for peacefulness does actually motivate. Trump wants one, for example. If an opportunity was there, I think he might have actually taken it just to get the prize.
The Nobel Peace Prize was first awarded to an institution in 1904 - https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1904/summary/ - so, to answer your question, 116 years ago.