Can we really blame Donald Trump for wanting the Nobel Peace Prize?

US President Donald Trump has made no bones about coveting Nobel Peace Prize. While this has caused endless mirth in social media, his aspiration is an opportunity to examine the popular understanding of peace and pacifism.

Peace is frequently reduced to “opposition to war” after a war has started. Moral discomfort with falling bombs, fleeing refugees and dead civilians that appears once violence is no longer deniable is at best a retrospective humanism, not pacifism.

True pacifism is a principled stance against militarism, which normalises “war-readiness” as a permanent condition of national and global life. It involves an opposition to the political economy of perpetual conflict which makes wars inevitable.

Pacifism also stands in opposition to imperialism and its contemporary variants. It is opposed to military force for “peacekeeping” and “humanitarian” interventions that serve as instruments for maintaining neo-colonial domination. Militarism is usually defined in terms of using the national military in foreign interventions.

However, it also pertains to border policing, arms trade, surveillance regimes and the glorification of “strongmen” leaders.

The dilution of peace

Originally conceived of to honour those who actively worked toward disarmament and international fraternity, the Nobel Peace Prize has, over time, effectively promoted a dilution of how the world understands peace and pacifism. It perpetuates narratives that...

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