Dr Peter van den Dungen says the US president is complicit in destruction, not peace. Plus a letter from Malcolm Rush
Donald Trump may be persuaded that the Nobel peace prize he covets will “become a genuine possibility” if he succeeds in bullying Ukraine “into accepting the unacceptable” (Editorial, 11 August). But the idea that this deluded and most undiplomatic and unpeaceful of US presidents could ever join such recipients as Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Martin Luther King Jr is ludicrous.
Alfred Nobel intended the prize in the first instance for efforts for “the abolition or reduction of standing armies”. Under Trump, the already bloated Pentagon budget has skyrocketed; in June he celebrated the US army’s 250th birthday (as well as his own birthday) with a military parade, complete with tanks, missiles, and aeroplanes overhead; in February, he signed an executive order to dismantle the US Institute of Peace, resulting in the unlawful firing of its president and board members.
