If Nobel Prizes were awarded for irony, Donald Trump would already have a cabinet full. The American president, ever fond of self-promotion, now styles himself as a peacemaker of historic proportions. He insists he &ldquo;ended seven wars&rdquo;, ticking off Cambodia, Kosovo, Congo, Pakistan, Israel, Egypt and Armenia as if peace were a matter of executive fiat. In his own telling, the only thing missing is his portrait alongside Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and Leymah Gbowee in the pantheon of Nobel laureates.
But here&rsquo;s the rub. The very wars where Trump has most loudly promised ceasefires &ndash; Russia versus Ukraine, and Israel&rsquo;s rampage in Gaza &ndash; grind on relentlessly. Deadlines pass, ceasefires collapse, and bombs continue to fall. In Gaza, Brown University&rsquo;s Costs of War project estimates that Washington has already funnelled $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel since Hamas&rsquo; 2023 assault, helping finance a conflict that has destabilised the entire Middle East.
Ukraine is no different. Since Russia&rsquo;s 2022 invasion, the United States has pumped in $66.9 billion in military assistance &ndash; $69.7 billion if one counts from 2014. Now Trump has dangled the prospect of Patriot missiles for Kyiv, though with his trademark art-of-the-deal flourish: Europeans or NATO must pick up the tab. The Pentagon &ndash; or as Trump has apparently rebranded it, the Department of War &ndash; has become less an instrument of defence than the world&rsquo;s most lavish weapons bazaar.
The numbers are staggering. U.S. defence spending hit $997 billion in 2024, roughly 40% of all global military expenditure, itself a record $2.7 trillion. By 2033, the Congressional Budget Office projects America&rsquo;s military budget will climb to $1.1 trillion, comfortably larger than the GDP of most countries. Meanwhile, U.S. arms manufacturers are thriving: $317 billion in revenues in 2023, with authorised export sales topping $200.8 billion the following year. The world may be on fire, but Lockheed Martin&rsquo;s balance sheet has never looked healthier.
For all this, Trump continues to cast himself as the Nobel committee&rsquo;s obvious next pick. Never mind that Mandela dismantled apartheid, King preached non-violence in the face of racial terror, and Gbowee mobilised women to end Liberia&rsquo;s civil war. Trump&rsquo;s contribution to peace, it seems, is to redefine it: peace is what happens when America sells everyone enough weapons to fight indefinitely.
The irony is almost Shakespearean. A self-declared &ldquo;peace president&rdquo; who presides over an arms race, justifies genocide as liberation, and sells missiles with the caveat that someone else must pay the bill. Yet perhaps Trump does deserve recognition &ndash; not for peace, but for perfecting the art of perpetual war, wrapped in the rhetoric of peace.
One suspects Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, might have appreciated the joke.
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A president who claims to end wars while financing new ones

Trump’s Nobel Quest: Peace Through Endless War?

A president who claims to end wars while financing new ones

September 28, 2025 | 15:54 IST