U.S. President Donald Trump is “hurting his chances” of winning the Nobel Peace Prize he has long coveted, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told Newsweek.
Trump has for years said he feels he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, one of the world’s best-known accolades. The Republican has at once styled himself a “peacemaker-in-chief,” tasked with closing deals to end conflicts across the globe, while authorizing a U.S. military buildup in the southern Caribbean and multiple lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in international waters this month. Observers raised serious questions about the legality of the missile strikes.
“I think that President Trump does care about peace,” said Panetta, who served as former President Barack Obama’s Secretary of Defense from 2011 to 2013 and CIA director between 2009 and 2011.
“I would say that, right now, since we don’t have peace in Ukraine, we don’t have peace in Gaza, and what’s happening in Latin America […] I think he’s hurting his chances to get any kind of peace prize,” Panetta said.
Trump has publicly declared he has “ended” six or seven wars. The administration said the Republican has settled conflicts between Israel and Iran, Cambodia and Thailand, India and Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, Serbia and Kosovo and Egypt and Ethiopia.
Trump has brokered “on average about one peace deal or ceasefire per month” in his first six months in office, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at the end of July. “It’s well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
The White House said in early August that he had “finally succeeded in making peace” between Armenia and Azerbaijan after the two countries signed a peace declaration and economic agreements in Washington.
Experts have said that, although the administration played a role in negotiations worldwide, it’s premature to say that several of these conflicts are settled.
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, which is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee each year for outstanding contributions to arms control, peace negotiations, democracy and limiting environmental damage.
At least two Republican lawmakers have put Trump forward for the prize, and Pakistan’s government said it would formally recommend the president for the 2026 prize “in recognition of his decisive diplomatic intervention and pivotal leadership during the recent India-Pakistan crisis.” The two nuclear-armed neighbors agreed to a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal in May after escalating military clashes.
Oleksandr Merezhko, who chairs Ukraine’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee and is a member of Zelensky’s party, told Newsweek in June he was withdrawing his nomination of Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize because he had “lost any sort of faith and belief” the Republican could secure peace in eastern Europe.
Trump had pledged to end the war in Ukraine in just 24 hours. But there is little hope for a quick end to the conflict, more than three and a half years after the current phase was sparked by Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country. Ukraine agreed to a U.S. ceasefire proposal in March, but the White House has been reluctant to force Moscow to move on its demands.
Trump is “evading—he is dodging—the need to impose sanctions on Russia,” Merezhko said at the time. Although Trump has threatened to impose punishing sanctions on Russia, his administration has so far failed to follow through.
A brief, U.S.-pushed first-stage ceasefire agreement between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas was signed in January, but fell apart in March as negotiators failed to nail down a second stage of the agreement and Israel resumed its offensive in Gaza.
Israel earlier this week confirmed it was expanding its ground operations in Gaza City on the same day a United Nations inquiry said Israel was committing genocide in the territory. Israel said it “categorically rejected” the U.N.’s “distorted and false” report.
Israel declared it was at war after a Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, that killed approximately 1,200 people. The subsequent conflict has devastated the densely populated territory of Gaza and its roughly 2 million residents.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said on Thursday that more than 65,000 people had died in Gaza since October 2023. These figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel has disputed the accuracy of these figures, which are widely cited by international analysts.
More than 90 percent of the buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since the fall of 2023, according to U.N. estimates. Many Gazans have been displaced several times.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, visiting Israel this week, said the U.S. fully supported Israel after the country launched strikes on Qatar earlier this month.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who met with Trump during his visit to the U.K. on Thursday, is reportedly planning to announce London will recognize a Palestinian state in the coming days. The U.K., France and Canada had said they would make the move at the U.N. General Assembly next week if Israel failed to improve the situation in Gaza.
Separately, Trump said at the start of the month the U.S. had struck alleged “narcoterrorists” working for the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua cartel in international waters in the southern Caribbean. Trump said the strike killed 11 people and that no U.S. personnel were injured. Venezuela said none of those on board were drug traffickers.
The Republican then said on Monday, a second alleged drug trafficking boat had been hit in international waters, killing three people. “We knocked off actually three boats, not two, but you saw two,” Trump later told reporters.
Obama was the somewhat surprising recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, less than a year into his first term. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it recognized what it termed the Democrat’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy” and nuclear non-proliferation.
The Nobel Prize is awarded in December each year, but the winner is announced in October.
Kristian Berg Harpviken, the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told the Agence France-Presse news agency earlier in September that media attention on candidates for the prize has “no impact on the discussions.”
“The test of whether you’re really going to achieve peace is whether you abide by the rule of law in trying to achieve that peace,” Panetta said.
“If you’re disciplined, if you’re willing to negotiate, if you’re willing to try to reach out, if you’re willing to engage with those that you’re trying to bring to a peaceful solution, then you’re a peacemaker,” the former secretary said. “But if you’re somebody that thinks that just a handshake or blowing people up is the key to achieving peace, then I’m not sure you can be called a peacemaker.”