Does Trump deserve a Nobel Peace Prize?

Should Donald Trump be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? So far the President has notched up two nominations in a twist that all but confirms my suspicions that 2020 is being directed by M Night Shyamalan. We appear to be witnessing a hinge moment in the Middle East, a region that has left successive US presidents battered, bruised and bitter. Now, in the space of two months, Trump has secured agreements from the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalise relations with Israel, with more Arab and Muslim states expected to follow.

True, these alliances have developed over time and are, in part, driven by the common threat of a nuclear Iran, but if we recognise that Trump disregarded decades of bipartisan consensus on the Middle East, we must ask whether that is the reason we are seeing the most positive outcomes in the Middle East for decades. The dreaded question, then, is: what if, somehow, Trump was right?

Of course, Trump can’t be right because the ‘smart people’ — the foreign policy establishment, the academics, the political hacks — said at every juncture that his foreign policy would lead to catastrophe.