Awarding Noble Piece Prize to Trump and Netanyahu?

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 25 Aug 2025

Anthony Judge | Laetus in Praesens - TRANSCEND Media Service

Appropriate Appreciation of Transactional Commodification of Honour in a Fragmenting World

Introduction

25 Aug 2025 – Donald Trump has been formally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by multiple countries — following a series of high-profile diplomatic engagements hosted at the White House and elsewhere — while his allies in Washington and abroad have submitted nominations on his behalf (Daniel Orton, Map of Countries That Have Nominated Donald Trump for Nobel Peace Prize Newsweek, 13 August 2025). Countries indicating that they support the nomination include: Pakistan, Israel, Cambodia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Rwanda, Gabon. The nominations are curiously coincidental with negotiations regarding favourable tariffs by the USA.

The quest of Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize has been widely noted — framed by its earlier receipt by Barack Obama (Tyler Pager, Trump’s Nobel Prize Obsession Is About More Than World Peace, The New York Times, 24 March 2025). The quest has been highlighted by his direct engagement with Norway’s finance minister on the matter (Elena Giordano, Trump cold-called Norwegian minister to ask about Nobel Peace Prize, Politico, 14 August 2025; Reanna Smith, Trump criticised for ‘pathetic’ cold-call to Norway for Nobel Peace Prize bid, Express, 16 August 2025; Anwesha Mitra, Trump dialed Norway to ask for the Nobel peace prize, Financial Express, 16 August 2025). In a transactional world in which the Peace Prize is simply another commodity, there is every reason to suppose that its award to Trump by Norway should be understood as a means for that country to achieve favourable tariff arrangements with the USA –with the implicit suggestion that tariff concessions are now the going exchange rate for Nobel prestige — a possibility for which it would be impossible to prove the contrary.

The legitimacy of such an award to Trump in terms of “peace” is highly controversial (Fred Mednick, The tarnished prize Trump desperately wants, The Washington Post, 20 August 2025; Peter van den Dungen, A Nobel peace prize for Donald Trump would be ludicrous The Guardian, 19 August 2025). Beyond question however, Trump has claimed (beyond question) to be a global peacemaker in multiple conflicts — a claim reviewed by groups of experts (Rachael Jolley and Sam Phelps, Did Trump really resolve six conflicts in a matter of months? The Conversation, 22 August 2025; Emma Shortis, et al, Does Trump deserve the Nobel Peace Prize? The Independent, 10 July 2025; How Donald Trump’s peacemaking ambitions unravelled, Financial Times, 19 March 2025).

Benjamin Netanyahu has apparently not been formally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, but his longstanding bond with Donald Trump in relation to many controversial issues is well recognized — most notably Palestine and Gaza — thereby recalling an important precedent. The conflict in that region had previously resulted in the prize being awarded jointly in 1994 to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres — for their work on the Oslo Peace Accords (elaborated in Norway). Controversy has also been associated with the award in 1973 to the Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for his negotiations to end the Vietnam War. Like Netanyahu, Kissinger has also been accused of war crimes — including bombings in Cambodia in 1969 and 1970 (Ahmed Twaij, Kissinger: A war criminal with a Nobel Peace Prize, Al Jazeera, 2 December 2023; Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, 2001)

Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 — evoking a wave of criticism due to the Obama administration’s involvement in wars in Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Yemen (Prince Williams, Barack Obama Is A War Criminal, Harvard Political Review, 29 September 2021; Jennifer Williams, From torture to drone strikes: the disturbing legal legacy Obama is leaving for Trump, Vox, 11 January 2017). As with Obama, Trump and Netanyahu are now perceived to have been complicit in the death of multitudes.

Arguably there is therefore a precedent for awarding a prize jointly to Trump and Netanyahu — acclaimed “war criminals”, or not — but this might more appropriately now take the form of a Noble Piece Prize. This would ensure explicit global acknowledgement of the manner in which Nobel laureates have been instrumental in fatally fragmenting countries, people and the world into “pieces”. In the case of the sciences, such a complement to Nobel Prizes has been recognized since 1991 in the form of the Ig Nobel Prize (List of Ig Nobel Prize Winners). If not laughter, the Nobel Piece Prize would appropriately invite tears and other insights.

In a world increasingly challenged by cacography and dyslexia, it is questionable how many are even sensitive to the distinction between “peace” and “piece” — especially as homophones in the absence of text. The two are effectively conflated by automatic search engine correction of “Noble Piece Prize”, compounding the confusion between “Noble” and “Nobel” cultivated by those aspiring to a form of nobility. In a world where autocorrect governs discourse, the distinction has become as blurred as the line between peacemaking and piece-making.

More ironically intriguing is the degree to which “piece” is so closely associated with the fundamental principles of the Nobel Foundation — as formulated by its founder, the arms manufacturer Alfred Nobel. It is after all the case that “piece” refers to a gun, or knife, or other weapon — in the familiar jargon employed by many of criminal persuasion. Appropriately, the sexual connotations of “gun” are of course shared with “piece”. Whilst Nobel bequeathed prizes to those advancing peace; the Noble Piece Prize would finally reward those perfecting war under that guise. Has the Nobel Peace Prize effectively become a codpiece — less a symbol of peace than an ornamental shield of power and virility, masking the violence beneath.

The use of “piece” as a slang term for a weapon — particularly a gun — dates back several centuries. The term is recorded as early as the 1500s, initially referring broadly to a firearm or artillery piece. The word “piece” itself was simply used for any (notably large or significant) part of weaponry, including cannons and guns, before coming to mean specifically a handgun in modern slang.

Rather than the quest for peace by any peacemaker, there is therefore a case for recognizing the role of a “piecemaker” — and the quest for “piecefulness”. As arms manufacturers, piecemakers have long invited extensive commentary. Far less evident is the significance of pieceful and piecefulness. Yet these are effectively well recognized to a surprising degree through the extent to which weapons are now widely distributed — most obviously in the USA with 120 firearms per 100 person (Estimated number of civilian guns per capita by country, Wikipedia).

With more guns than people, this could be considered the primary indicator of “piecefulness”, with the USA — as led by Donald Trump — then to be recognized as the most pieceful country in the world (Why US is only country where there are more guns than people, The Business Standard, 25 May 2022; Fact check: United States now has more guns than people, WUSA9, 9 June 2022). In addition to that indicator, the military arsenals offer a sense of government “piecefulness” (Missiles of the World, Center for Strategic and International Studies). In that light, piecefulness could indeed be understood as the fundamental strategic aim of the American Empire (Arming Civil Society Worldwide, 2003). Measured not by treaties signed but by firepower stockpiled, the United States has long been the most pieceful nation on earth — exporting fragments of peace with each shipment of munitions (US spends a record $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since last Oct. 7, Associated Press, 7 October 2024; Average US Taxpayer Paid Over $5,000 Toward Militarism in 2023, Truthout, 9 April 2024).

Perhaps the true nobility of a Piece Prize lies not in what it honours, but in what it exposes: that in a world fragmented beyond repair, honour continues to be conflated with horror. The grim paradox of the age being that state honour has become irrevocably conflated with public horror. To laugh or to weep at the Noble Piece Prize? Perhaps the higher nobility is to recognize that the line between the two has itself been obliterated.

Trump’s quest should not be seen as an undignified aberration, but as the purest expression of a transactional age — the relentless pursuit by many of nobility, honour, and prestige — a Nobel Prize as the ultimate commodity, with a Noble Piece Prize as its most honest reflection.

In this exercise experimental use was made of the Perplexity AI to glean insights systematically from the world’s resources on the multifacetted nature of the challenge. The responses of AI have been framed as grayed areas — with that form of presentation itself treated as an experiment, in anticipation of the future implication of AI into research documents and debate. Clearly the questions can be asked of other AIs — and framed otherwise — whether at the present time or in the future when more sophisticated large language models become available.

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