Trump, North Korea, and Nobel

For the past week or so I’ve seen a few post on Facebook and Twitter about people wanting to nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, basically for “his tough stance forcing North Korea to the peace table.” There is a process for nominating people, but it’s not an online poll or anything like that, so no Peacie McPeaceface.  While some people apparently support this before any peace deal has even been signed or gone into effect (and I wonder how many of these same people criticized Obama’s award in 2009 by saying “He hasn’t done anything yet!”) many see it not as anything dealing with Korea, just some way to legitimize Trump.  And when the Norwegian Nobel Committee awards the Peace Prize to someone else, some Trump supporters will use it as an excuse to cry that it’s a socialist conspiracy to silence conservatives.  As someone who was uneasy with Obama’s win in 2009 and looking back now I think he probably shouldn’t have won it, do I think Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize?  Fuck no.

In the past year or so, I’ve seen several articles and videos about North Korea.  One thing that almost all of them say is that the point of North Korea’s nuclear program was to keep the dictatorship alive.  Basically, they were using the millions of civilian and military lives in South Korea, Japan, and even the US as human shields.  “If you try to remove us from power, millions will die.” But given reports that there was a collapse at their test site, their nuclear program may have suffered a major setback.  So what kind of deterrent could they use to stop a potential madman from starting a war to show the Twitterverse how tough he is before the midterms?  Declare peace, perhaps?  Don’t get me wrong, I hope for peace on the Korean peninsula, but doesn’t North Korea have a habit of making promises and agreements, then waiting until the world is focused elsewhere before going back to doing whatever they were doing?  Yes, North Korea says it’s stopping its nuclear and missile tests, but won’t this be the fifth or sixth time they’ve said that?  If there is a peace – that lasts – then yes, someone should get the Nobel Peace Prize.  But I’d say that Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un are probably more deserving of it that Trump.