Sarah Harte: Let's hope this year's Nobel Peace Prize isn't another 'what the hell'
US president Donald Trump meets María Corina Machado in the Oval Office in January where she presented the president with her Nobel Peace Prize. The likely nomination of Donald Trump, a man who will go down in history as a promoter of global instability, a man who every day confuses diplomacy with revenge and dumps on international law, is farcical.
These days, political performance often resembles satire, presumably making it harder for satirists to satirise.
Films like Stanley Kubrick’s , ridiculing political and military authority while depicting a world where titles and credentials bear no relation to competence, lacks the same punch. When the American president depicts himself as Jesus, there are fewer taboos to skewer.
In the real world, when international relations are stretched to capacity, it’s in our interests to laud people who chug on trying to make it a better place.
The Nobel Peace Prize spotlights courageous individuals who stand up for the oppressed and aims to impact international affairs. But from the outside, even that seems in danger of becoming self-satirising.
At the weekend, a spokesperson for the UK bookmaker William Hill said Donald Trump's odds of winning the prize have risen. For the second year running, he is a reputed nominee. William Hill "expect Trump’s name to remain in the frame all the way up to the Committee’s announcement".
So how do people make the cut for the storied prize? The Norwegian Nobel Committee currently accepts all valid entries, putting a person’s name forward without vetting. There’s no requirement that nominations meet a high evidentiary threshold beyond a short written justification.
The pool of potential nominators, encompassing professors, parliamentarians, judges in the International Court of Justice, and Nobel Laureates, sounds respectable until you consider the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu, as a head of state, nominated Trump for the prize last year.
Netanyahu tweeted: "Give Donald Trump the Nobel Peace Prize-he deserves it!" accompanied by a gold medal emoji and an illustration of Trump accepting an award to rapturous applause.
But while being nominated for the prize appears prestigious, it simply means that one eligible person backed you. There’s no limit on the number of nominations that can be submitted for a single person.
The committee doesn’t announce the names of nominees with a 50-year rule of secrecy around the nomination prize, but information is often released by the nominee or people behind the nomination, which surely should disqualify the nominees if they are connected to the leak.
You can see the problem. Does the nomination process of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee not become some form of reduction ad absurdum, taking a globally respected award and pushing its logic to a ridiculous extreme, so it’s devalued?
The likely nomination of Donald Trump, a man who will go down in history as a promoter of global instability, a man who every day confuses diplomacy with revenge and dumps on international law, is farcical.
It’s a farce that surpasses anything Kubrick could serve up. Former winners of the prize include Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Dr Martin Luther King. Mother Teresa also got the nod as one of a cadre of 18 women who have won.
Alfred Nobel, as the inventor of dynamite, amassed a fortune. Was he trying to expiate his own sins when he wrote in his will that the prize was to promote "fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the promotion of peace congresses".
He reputedly angered his family, but his eye was on legacy. The fund he left in 1895 set up five prizes - for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace.
In January, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2025 for "keeping the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness", transferred her prize to Donald Trump.
Slight hitch. As the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, it wasn’t transferable. "Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others."
The decision is final and stands for all time.
Either way, Machado’s gesture didn’t win her Trump’s support as she angled for the presidency post-Madura’s kidnapping.
Trump commented that although Machado was "a very nice woman" (high praise indeed), she "doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within, the country".
He did post on Truth Social, though, and hopefully this was of some consolation to her.
"María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect. Thank you, María!"
Let’s not be too harsh on Machado. We’re familiar with the concept of toadying here.
I think I speak for many of us when I say that, for two years running, we have hidden down the back of the sofa with pure shame, with one eye on the television, watching the Taoiseach bring shamrock to the White House for the current -style presentation, on St Patrick’s Day.
That depressing pageantry is necessary. We need the Taoiseach to be a pragmatist. The consequences of stomping on our economic relationship with the US, or of preventing Irish lobby and trade groups from heading to Washington to speak with US companies, agencies and clients, are unthinkable in terms of their impact on all of our lives.
As an aside, Micheál Martin did an excellent job this year, serving as a safe pair of hands during the high-stakes encounter, avoiding the obsequious Uriah Heep-style of some of his contemporaries who paid obeisance to Trump.
Anyway, if you’re not in business or don’t have to balance the country’s books, it’s easier to be lofty about principles. And yes, principles do matter, particularly if you can afford them.
The Nobel Peace Prize Committee can afford to uphold principles. Principles are their raison d'être. By its nature, the prize is not perfect, as a few selected winners often obscure the efforts of many more people involved in a project who get forgotten.
The prize has previously attracted controversy over its selection, for example, of diplomat Henry Kissinger in 1973, who was considered by some as a war criminal for his ‘bombs over diplomacy’ style to conflict. Two members of the committee resigned when it was awarded to him, and protests erupted.
The Trump-Machado stunt was vulgar, but the blame cannot be laid at the committee's door. It was outside their control. Yet, should the Norwegian Nobel Committee not revisit the nomination criteria to retain the integrity of the prize?
There are 287 candidates this year, possibly including Trump. The list comprises 208 individuals and 79 organisations. This is not the shortlist. It’s a list of nominees. The selection process from that initial list of nominees is infinitely more deliberative.
Of course, awards generally have less objectivity than you might think. They very often hinge on who is judging and on trends rather than on a stable, objective standard that underpins them.
But they get us talking about what we value. To quote a recent editorial from "Symbolism matters…And sometimes even the smallest gesture can carry the greatest weight".
Denying Trump a prize he has long coveted and doesn’t deserve is symbolically important. But we live in crazy times when the unthinkable becomes part of everyday life.
Let’s cross our fingers that we don’t fall victim to another ‘what-the-hell’ moment when the prize is announced in October. If Donald Trump makes the shortlist, never mind wins, then we may as well promote a bull to head of customer service in a china shop.
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