Nobel experts not betting

STOCKHOLM, Sept 25 (Reuters): US President Donald Trump will not win the Nobel Peace Prize he so covets as he is dismantling the international world order the award committee cherishes, according to experts.
His lobbying is likely to be counterproductive too. The award-giving committee prefers to work independently, one of its members told Reuters, sheltering from outside pressures.
Instead, the five-strong body may wish to highlight a humanitarian organisation working in an environment that has become more challenging partly due to Trump's US aid cuts. The announcement is on Oct 10.
This could mean an award for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, the UN children's agency, UNICEF, the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, or a local grassroots group such as Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms, among others.
"He has no chance to get the Peace Prize at all," said Asle Sveen, a historian of the award, citing Trump's support for Israel in the war in Gaza and his attempts at rapprochement with Russian President Vladimir Putin, among the reasons.
Alfred Nobel's will, the award's foundation, says the award should go to the person "who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations".
That is something Trump is not doing, according to Nina Graeger, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo.
"He has withdrawn the US from the World Health Organization and from the Paris Accord on climate, he has initiated a trade war on old friends and allies," she told Reuters.
"That is not exactly what we think about when we think about a peaceful president or someone who really is interested in promoting peace."
To be sure, many surprising candidates have won the Nobel Peace Prize in the past - Barack Obama less than eight months after he became US President or US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger at the height of the Vietnam War.
"Sometimes people have received the Peace Prize in spite of a brutal record, an authoritarian record, a background where they've contributed to evil, or at least wrongdoing," said Henrik Syse, a former member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
"But they had explicitly seen the things that they had contributed to were wrong, and therefore took the steps necessary to correct these wrongs," he said, citing the example of FW de Klerk, the last apartheid-era leader of South Africa, who won the prize jointly with Nelson Mandela in 1993.