In July 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu submitted a letter of nomination for U.S. President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. In the world we imagined decades ago—where the Nobel Peace Prize once evoked memories of Martin Luther King Jr., Desmond Tutu, or even Yitzhak Rabin—such a move might have sparked outrage or satire. But today, it raises eyebrows not because it’s shocking, but because it’s expected. After all, Trump had already nominated himself through the Abraham Accords, agreements that sought to normalize relations between Israel and several Arab regimes while circumventing the central issue: Palestine.
The Nobel Peace Prize was never divorced from power. But it used to pretend. In the last two decades, however, its illusion of neutrality has worn increasingly thin. The prize now often mirrors the West’s ideological priorities—democracy promotion, liberalization, “peace through strength”—rather than any genuine commitment to structural justice, demilitarization, or nonviolence.
It’s worth asking: whose peace does the Nobel Prize really celebrate?
The 2009 award to Barack Obama, barely nine months into his presidency, marked a turning point. It was given not for what he had done, but for what he promised. That same year, the U.S. escalated drone strikes in Pakistan, and in 2010, NATO operations intensified in Afghanistan. It wasn’t peace that was rewarded—it was the promise of a palatable empire.
When Malala Yousafzai received the award in 2014, it was both deserved and politically convenient. She was a victim of the Taliban, a symbol of female education under attack—but also a figure the West could easily appropriate into its civilizing mission narrative. Malala’s peace became a symbol of individual empowerment, but disconnected from any critique of the global structures that produce poverty, war, and patriarchy.
Meanwhile, the very same year, Palestinians in Gaza were recovering from a brutal 51-day Israeli offensive that killed over 2,000 people—most of them civilians. There were no Nobel mentions. The only peace that counts, it seems, is the peace of those who align neatly with liberal capitalism, not those who resist its machinery.
The prize, historically, has been awarded by a committee appointed by the Norwegian Parliament—an institution embedded in the West’s political orbit. Its selections reflect the geopolitical anxieties and priorities of that order. For example, in 2010, the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the prize, prompting China to freeze diplomatic relations with Norway. His selection—while grounded in legitimate human rights concerns—was not just about dissent, but about asserting moral authority over a rising China.
Compare this to the total silence on Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, figures whose revelations exposed vast surveillance empires and war crimes. Their pursuit of peace was too inconvenient, too disruptive. Their truth was unsanctioned.
In the era of “rules-based order,” peace is no longer the absence of violence or the triumph of justice. It is a brand—curated, marketable, ideologically safe. Nobel laureates are now often chosen for symbolic value: they reflect a version of peace that reassures rather than challenges the dominant system. They are “peacemakers” who rarely disrupt empire.
This is particularly dangerous for the Global South. Movements for liberation, from Iran to Palestine to Congo, are often dismissed as “radical,” “violent,” or “unrealistic,” regardless of their grassroots nature or ethical claims. Their visions of peace—which demand redistribution, sovereignty, or the dismantling of neocolonial structures—are rarely acknowledged by the Nobel committee. Because peace, according to empire, must never be revolutionary.
Consider the current situation in Gaza. Over 57,000 Palestinians have been killed in the past year under Israeli bombardment. International law is routinely violated. UN resolutions are blocked. The U.S. continues to send weapons. Yet no Nobel committee member will seriously consider the resistance of an occupied people as a candidate for peace. Peace is what is granted to the powerful when they pause their violence—never to the oppressed when they demand dignity.
This is not merely hypocrisy; it is ideological discipline. The prize helps structure global consciousness around acceptable norms. It tells us who to celebrate, who to pity, and who to erase.
What then should be done?
We don’t need new prizes. We need new vocabularies. Peace should not mean submission to liberal capitalism or the mere cessation of open war. Peace must be redefined as the restoration of justice, the right to sovereignty, and the dismantling of imperial dominance. It must include economic liberation, environmental repair, and cultural dignity. This is not utopian—it is practical. Because without justice, peace will remain a slogan, not a structure.
The problem is not just the Nobel Peace Prize—it is what it reveals about global governance. Even concepts like “human rights,” “development,” and “democracy” have become battlegrounds for ideological control. Institutions in the West frame their version of these values as universal, while sidelining indigenous, Islamic, socialist, or Afrocentric interpretations.
To write an alternative vision of peace, we must start from the margins—from Gaza, from Tehran, from Caracas. We must listen to movements that survive under siege. We must acknowledge that peace cannot be built with bombs, and dignity cannot be delivered through sanctions.
Until then, the Nobel Peace Prize will remain what it has become: a prize for those who make empire comfortable—not those who make the world just.
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