Why Donald Trump believes he ‘deserves the Nobel Peace Prize’ and ‘ended seven wars’ | World News

Donald Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine have reignited his campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize.

When he met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders at the White House on 18 August, he claimed: “I’ve ended six wars” – telling reporters the following day he had, in fact, resolved seven.

The US president has made “no secret that he would love nothing more” than winning the prestigious accolade, experts tell Sky News, with suggestions he is a worthy candidate stretching back to his first term.

Trump’s Nobel campaign

2019

In February 2019, Mr Trump claimed Japan’s then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had nominated him following his 2018 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, where they discussed the country’s nuclear weapons programme.

Speaking at the White House, he claimed Mr Abe had given him “the most beautiful copy of a letter that he sent to the people who give out a thing called the Nobel Prize”.

He claimed Mr Abe had told him: “I have nominated you,” to which Mr Trump replied: “Thank you. Many other people feel that way too. I’ll probably never get it. But that’s okay.”

The president went on to reference his predecessor Barack Obama winning the prize in 2009.

“They gave it to Obama. He didn’t even know what he got it for. He was there for about 15 seconds and he got the Nobel Prize,” he said. “With me, I probably will never get it.”

Mr Obama won the prize just nine months into his presidency for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”. In his acceptance speech, he acknowledged the controversy around it, saying: “Compared to some of the giants of history who’ve received this prize – Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela – my accomplishments are slight.”

In late 2019, ahead of a meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, Mr Trump told reporters he “would get a Nobel Prize for a lot of things, if they give it out fairly, which they don’t”.

2020

In January 2020, he complained he should have won it instead of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, who oversaw his country signing a peace deal in its border conflict with Eritrea.

Referencing his own involvement in the peace talks, which were largely led by Saudi Arabia, Mr Trump told an election rally in Ohio: “I’m going to tell you about the Nobel Peace Prize, I’ll tell you about that. I made a deal, I saved a country, and I just heard that the head of that country is now getting the Nobel Peace Prize for saving the country.

“But you know, that’s the way it is. As long as we know, that’s all that matters… I saved a big war, I’ve saved a couple of them.”

2024

At another rally ahead of his second election win in 2024, he told supporters in Detroit: “If I were named Obama I would have had the Nobel Prize given to me in 10 seconds.”

2025

In February this year, during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, he said: “They will never give me a Nobel Peace Prize. I deserve it, but they will never give it to me.”

And on 18 August, during his summit with Ukrainian and European leaders, he said: “If you look at the six deals I settled this year, they were all at war. I didn’t do any ceasefires.”

On 19 August, he corrected himself, telling Fox News: “We ended seven wars.”

His team has also added to calls for him being awarded the prize, with his press secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioning it at several White House briefings, describing him as the “peace president” and saying it is “well past time”.

Which seven wars does Trump claim to have ended?

After his claims of “ending seven wars” amid Ukraine talks in Washington, the White House released the list of conflicts the president was referring to – six during his second term and one in his first.

Armenia and Azerbaijan

The two nations have been engaged in nearly 40 years of conflict over the disputed status of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Most recently, serious fighting broke out in September 2023 when Azerbaijan seized the area, which has been home to ethnic Armenians since pre-Soviet times.

But on 8 August this year, a peace agreement between the two sides was announced at the White House, which saw both leaders nominate Mr Trump for the Nobel prize.

Read more
Trump’s approach to peacemaking is war vs doing business

Of all of the Trump peace claims, this is among the most legitimate, Dr Theo Zenou, research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, tells Sky News.

“Credit where credit is due: brokering a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan is a genuine achievement,” he says.

Describing it as an “important symbol of progress”, he cautions that it was also largely due to “Russia’s declining influence in the region” and there remain “points of contention” between the two sides.

Thailand and Cambodia

Tensions over land along Thailand and Cambodia’s 500-mile shared border have gone on for more than a century, leading to sporadic flare-ups in fighting.

On 24 July, after Thai officials claimed Cambodian troops opened fire at one of their military bases along the border, violence broke out again, leaving 35 people dead and hundreds of thousands of people displaced across four days.

Two days in, Mr Trump posted on Truth Social: “I am calling the Acting Prime Minister of Thailand, right now, to likewise request a Ceasefire, and END to the War, which is currently raging.”

While it was Malaysia that hosted peace talks, Mr Trump threatened to pull his negotiations over potential reductions in US tariffs on Thai and Cambodian imports unless the ceasefire held.

On 7 August, an agreement was signed.

“Trump’s style is transactional,” says Dr Samir Puri, director of the Centre for Global Governance and Security at Chatham House. “He tries to economically induce the different parties to stop fighting – but there’s a huge difference between getting fighting to stop in the short-term and resolving the root causes of the conflict.”

Dr Puri says that this “nuance is lost on Trump”, while Dr Zenou adds that “underlying tensions are still salient”.

Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo

Longstanding tensions between the two African nations reignited in early 2025 when a group of Rwandan-government backed rebels, M23, seized a mineral-rich area of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Rwanda, which borders the M23-controlled region of the DRC, has been accused of supporting the group, but denies the accusations.

After months of fighting, in June the countries’ foreign ministers travelled to the White House to sign a deal promising to honour a previous ceasefire agreement from 2024.

Mr Trump then credited himself with creating peace in “one of the worst wars anyone’s ever seen”.

Read more
What is the fighting in DRC about?

However, the Rwandan M23 rebel group was not directly involved in the talks and has said it does not consider the agreement binding.

Although Dr Puri notes it is “unprecedented” for a US president to intervene in the conflict and Dr Zenou describes it as a “step in the right direction”, he says the lack of M23 representation means the conflict “will likely rage on”.

Israel and Iran

The US bombed three of Iran’s nuclear sites after war broke out between the Islamic Republic and Israel on 13 June.

Following the US attacks, Mr Trump said: “Officially, Iran will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 12th Hour, Israel will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 24th Hour, an Official END to THE 12 DAY WAR will be saluted by the World.”

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the US, but Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed that the US strikes “did not achieve anything” and claimed Iran had emerged victorious.

Dr Puri notes that this is the only one of the seven conflicts where the president has used military force, which in itself is commendable. But, again, he claims Mr Trump merely “pushed the conflict into a state of dormancy” as opposed to addressing its fundamental causes.

Dr Zenou adds that there was “no peace deal” and the “two sides are essentially at war”.

India and Pakistan

India and Pakistan have fought over the status of the Himalayan border region of Kashmir since their partition in 1947.

Tensions flared up again for four days in May following an attack in India-controlled Kashmir.

The nuclear-armed neighbours came to a ceasefire agreement on 10 May, which Mr Trump claimed was the result of a “long night of talks mediated by the United States”.

Although Pakistani officials ended up nominating him for the Nobel prize, India vehemently denied any US involvement and that talks were held “directly between India and Pakistan”.

Dr Puri describes India-Pakistan as the most “tenuous” of the US president’s peace claims.

“In no way could Trump claim to have resolved the Indo-Pakistan conflict, which dates back to 1947 and has extraordinary structural causes,” he says.

Egypt and Ethiopia

For the last 12 years, Ethiopia and Egypt have been engaged in a dispute over Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the River Nile, which began operating in 2022.

The dam is hugely important to Ethiopia, but Egypt says it compromises its access to water from the Nile. Talks on the issue broke down in late-June and no agreement has been reached.

Soon after, Mr Trump posted on social media: “If I were Egypt, I’d want the water in the Nile,” before declaring the US would solve the dispute soon.

He then claimed the US partially funded the dam – but the White House were unable to expand on his claims.

“I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for keeping Peace between Egypt and Ethiopia (A massive Ethiopian built dam, stupidly financed by the United States of America, substantially reduces the water flowing into The Nile River),” Mr Trump wrote online.

Ethiopian officials heavily dispute the assertions, saying the dam was built “without any foreign aid”.

Serbia and Kosovo

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 after years of tensions in the wake of the Balkan wars in the 1990s.

Ninety-two countries recognise Kosovo’s independence, but the Serbian government still does not recognise its sovereignty and, in June this year, tensions flared again.

“Serbia, Kosovo was going to go at it, going to be a big war. I said you go at it, there’s no trade with the United States. They said, well, maybe we won’t go at it,” he posted online.

Kosovo’s President Vjosa Osmani said she had “reliable information” Mr Trump had intervened to prevent a skirmish but did not give any further details.

When this was put to the White House, Team Trump only referenced the agreement signed at the White House during his first term in September 2020, when the states committed to economic normalisation.

Could Trump actually win one?

Donald Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize more than 10 times – by Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Manet, a Ukrainian politician, as well as legislators from the US, Sweden, and Norway.

Dr Zenou cautions that foreign leaders who have nominated him are “first and foremost engaging in diplomacy”.

“Trump has made it very clear he would love nothing more than winning the Nobel Peace Prize. So they are hoping that it will be music to his ears and curry them favour.”

But he adds that while it is not included in his list of “seven wars”, the Abraham Accords, which saw several Arab states recognise Israel for the first time in almost 50 years, are Mr Trump’s “greatest diplomatic achievement”.

Describing them as a “watershed moment in the history of the Middle East”, Dr Zenou said the accords, signed at the White House in 2020, are all the more significant for having held despite the current conflict between Israel and Hamas.

However, Saudi Arabia is yet to sign them, which will serve as “one of Trump’s biggest tests yet” in his quest for the Nobel Prize, Dr Zenou adds.

His current campaign to end the war in Ukraine could be another way to the accolade, according to Dr Puri.

“Ukraine is the one on which his record will be judged,” he says. “That’s the one on the pedestal and how Trump imagines he could forge a path to Norway and be given the Nobel Peace Prize.”

But Dr Puri reiterates the difference between “conflict management” and “conflict resolution”, with Mr Trump’s interventions confined to the former.

“He’s more in the business of managing these conflicts, using economic inducements or punishments to get the two sides to talk. He’s not resolving conflict,” he says.

Ultimately, he adds, while Mr Trump is undoubtedly trying to falsely “aggrandise” his record, his lack of military intervention (with the exception of Iran) is commendable.

“There’s an absurdity to Trump’s claims, but like many of his claims, within the absurdity there are sometimes grains of truth.

“So let’s not be excessively critical of a US president, who however faultily, is intervening in conflicts to resolve them largely without direct US military intervention.”