Could Trump Win The Nobel Peace Prize? Peace in Korean Peninsula Would Be Significant Foreign Policy Achievement

With the unthinkable now cautiously possible, peace between North and South Korea, speculation about President Donald Trump becoming a Nobel Peace Prize winner has begun. If peace in the Korean Peninsula truly happens, the Nobel committee could be left with a difficult choice regarding Trump's candidacy.

Recognizing those who helped bring peace to the region would seem like an easy choice, but a decision to give Trump the award could force the Nobel Prize committee into a fierce political debate on whether a man who has openly mocked foreign leaders, launched multiple airstrikes and has threatened war, deserves an award for peace.

But, if the reconciliation happens, how could Trump's apparent achievement not be recognized? Donald Trump Jr. said regardless of what unfolds, his father won't get the credit. "Remember who decides this stuff," he tweeted. "... The globalist elite would never give him that win."

It's not just Trump. He and Kim Jong Un could both claim the award this year, Trump aides and an oddsmaker from Britain said, according to New York Magazine.

Trump has taken a hard foreign policy stance with North Korea since he took office. With "rocket man" quips and threatening words of military strength, peace with the North Korea Leader appeared a lost cause. But fast forward to April 2018, and Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in are shaking hands at the Military Demarcation Line, signing the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification on the Korean Peninsula and formally ending the Korean war.

After the apparently successful meeting between the Korean leaders Trump is now scheduled to meet with the North Korean leader soon, with a location yet to be determined.

"I will be meeting with Kim Jong Un in the coming weeks, we look forward to that," Trump said during a Friday press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "We're down to two countries as to a site, and we'll let you know what that site is."

If that meeting and Friday's summit leads to a peace accord, GOP leaders are saying a Nobel Prize would be warranted. Senator Lindsey Graham and former Trump administration official Carl Higbie have already voiced their support for him to win the award.

"We're not there yet, but if this happens, President Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize," Graham said on Friday on Fox & Friends.

Laura Ingraham tweeted her support for him to win the award on Friday.

"When will we see the headline: "Trump Ends the Korean War"? Unlike Obama, he actually deserves the Nobel Peace Prize," Ingraham said.

If Trump were to win the Nobel Peace Prize, he would not be the first controversial winner. Le Duc Tho became the first and only person to voluntarily refuse a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in negotiating a ceasefire on Vietnam with U.S. Secretary of the State Henry Kissinger. Despite Kissinger's acceptance of the award, Tho refused to accept because "peace has not been really restored in South Vietnam."

"When the Paris agreement on Vietnam is respected, guns are silenced, and peace is really restored in South Vietnam, I will consider the acceptance of this prize," he said.

Other controversial candidates who have won the award include German journalist Carl Von Ossietzky, who was awarded the prize in 1935 after publishing secret details about the German remilitarization in breach of the Treaty of Versailles before World War II began. The Nazi Party put pressure on the Norwegian Nobel Committee to not grant the award to Ossietzky in 1934, but the committee eventually gave him the award the following year. His win caused two members of the committee to quit, saying they did not want to get involved with what was going on in Germany at the time.

Former President Barack Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, was another controversial win. The Obama administration said it was embarrassing to win the prestigious award his first year in office. The committee said Obama won because of "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

The first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Wangari Maathai, also had controversy surrounding her selection. Maathai was granted the award for her efforts to empower women living in rural areas in Kenya to reverse deforestation. Her win, however, was slammed by many because of remarks she allegedly made in a Kenyan newspaper, saying that HIV/AIDS were created by Western scientists to try to depopulate Africa.

There are currently 329 candidates for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, according to the organization's website. The winners will be announced on December 10.