GUEST BLOG: Ian Powell – Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize!

Readers familiar with my politics might be perplexed at least (shocked at worse) by the heading to this post.

Trump acolyte Shane Jones should lead the charge

Let me go further. Arguably Aotearoa New Zealand’s leading Trump acolyte, NZ First deputy leader and cabinet minister Shane Jones, should publicly advocate for the government to get in behind this position.

Why Trump should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

I came to this belated change of heart after reading a paywalled editorial in Le Monde Diplomatique (November 2025) by the monthly progressive publication’s president and editorial director Benoît Bréville: Give Trump the Peace Prize!

Benoît Bréville argues that Trump being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize would be consistent with its award decision-making

Bréville gives the following examples to argue why awarding Donald Trump the Peace Prize would be consistent with past practice:

• In 1906 the prize was awarded to President Theodore Roosevelt who viewed Latin America as the United States’ backyard where it could intervene at will. He sent marines to Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. He sponsored a separatist movement in Panama to secure control of the future canal.

[Roosevelt picked up from where his assassinated predecessor William McKinlay left off as ‘America’s first imperialist president’. I referred to Trump’s admiration for McKinlay in a recent post (9 January) in the context of the rewriting of the 1823 Munroe Doctrine from anti to pro-colonisation and the US military assault and abductions in Venezuela: ‘First American imperialist president’]

• In 1953 General George Marshall was awarded the prize. As US army chief of staff in the second world war he approved the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As Secretary of State he orchestrated the covert funding of the Christian Democrats in Italy’s and the dissemination of false information to ensure the election of a rightwing government.

Henry Kissinger intensified war against Vietnamese and Cambodian before his critical role in military coup in Chile

• In 1974 Henry Kissinger, US National Security Advisor (1969-75), was awarded the prize. After earlier “having set all Indochina ablaze” with intensified bombing, he was instrumental in the murderous overthrow of the elected socialist Salvador Allende government through a military coup in 1973 to be followed by a brutal and bloody military dictatorship. Kissinger’s prize was awarded a month after this tumultuous event.
• President Barack Obama received the prize in 2009 after having “lent tepid support” to a coup against elected Honduran president Manuel Zelaya.

Donald Trump was robbed (of all things by a mere acolyte!)

Consequently it was only fair and reasonable for Donald Trump to have been the 2025 prize recipient.

Trump the victim of inconsistent Nobel Prize decision-making

After all, after only a short time in office he had supporting the intensification of genocide in Gaza (and its colonisation), deployed troops in the Caribbean, and authorised the killing of Venezuelan citizens on fishing boats.

Imagine therefore his shock and horror at being headed off by the comparative ‘small fry’ acolyte and far-right Venezuelan María Corina Machado. I discussed this decision in previous post (18 October): The ignoble Nobel from Hitler to Machado.

Acolyte María Corina Machado trumped Trump

To be fair she had for 25 years called for foreign intervention against her own country, including supporting both the failed coup in 2002 and rightwing riots leading to the deaths of innocent Venezuelans.

Further, after the award’s announcement she congratulated Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu for his genocidal ethnic cleansing in Gaza. She keeps good company!

More recently Machado has supported the murderous US military attack in Venezuela (as well as the political abductions) and advocated that it be repeated in Cuba and Nicaragua.

What NZ First should do

This clearly demonstrates that the Nobel Peace Prize committee has a clear preference for the perpetuators (and their acolytes) of undermining democracy, violence and war than its victims (and supporters such as Julian Assange).

With Winston Peters praising Trump for withdrawing the US from the World Health Organisation, backing Jones should be easy-peasy

Consequently Shane Jones and his fellow MAGA minions in NZ First should stand up and advocate for the Government to support Donald Trump being awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. After all, his boss Winston Peters requires no persuading.

Star Trek’s Spock would say, its logical. Alternatively, perhaps the Nobel Peace Prize should go be deposited to where the sun doesn’t shine!

Ian Powell was Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, the professional union representing senior doctors and dentists in New Zealand, for over 30 years, until December 2019. He is now a health systems, labour market, and political commentator living in the small river estuary community of Otaihanga (the place by the tide). First published at Political Bytes