I am not a Trump-type conservative. Neither am I suffering from Trump derangement syndrome. However, there is reason to be concerned about President Donald J. Trump’s incessant wish to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

As The Australian reported on August 15, Trump recently called Norway’s Finance Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, when he was walking in Oslo. The US President wanted to talk about tariffs, trade co-operation and the like. But then the conversation took a new dimension.

According to a report in the Dagens Naeringsliv newspaper, Trump told Stoltenberg that he wanted to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in October this year. It seems that Trump is annoyed that president Barack Obama received this gong for not doing much at all. And Trump reckons he should get one for doing something substantial.

Interviewed by Fox News’ Sean Hannity on August 15 about whether the President might win the Nobel Peace Prize if he manages to end the Russia-Ukraine war, the response came in Trump-speech: “Well, interesting because somebody said if I get this, you know, the Nobel Peace Prize. I said, well I’m not involved in it but what about the other six wars or whatever it is? I mean those were big. Those were wars. As an example, you go to Africa, the Congo against Rwanda.”

Trump’s focus on peace prizes reminded me of what British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge wrote in his irreverent book The Thirties, which was published in 1940 when World War II was under way.

Muggeridge looked back in mockery at the inter-war peace movement in Britain. He pointed out that “pledges were earnestly registered never in any circumstances whatsoever to take up arms”. And added: “Nobel Peace Prizes were awarded to (Arthur) Henderson, Sir Austen Chamberlain … and in France a Golden Book of Peace was inscribed with several million signatures.” Muggeridge mentioned that Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933. But, in the end, it was all in vain. Nazi Germany, under the rule of Adolf Hitler, was not in give-peace-a-chance mode. Hitler wanted war and his regime was ended by military defeat on the western and eastern fronts after many German cities were almost in a not-a-stone-upon-a-stone devastation due to Allied bombing.

Trump has his strengths and his weaknesses. But his greeting of Russia’s (elected) dictator Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, August 15 (local time), was not his finest moment. There was something nauseating in seeing the US President clapping the Russian President as he reached the red carpet before their talks began.

In this sense Putin was welcomed back to Western society, despite his brutal war on Ukraine’s civilians and the kidnapping of many Ukrainian children.

Here the US first lady – Melania Trump – has a better understanding of Russia’s leader than her husband. She wrote a letter to Putin about the kidnapped Ukrainians that Trump handed to him.

And then there is the fact that the Russian President presides over the murder of his political opponents living outside Russia. And then there is the death during incarceration of Alexei Navalny whose only crime was to advocate freedom for his fellow Russians.

Sure, Trump is not the only US President to exhibit weakness in the presence of Putin’s strength. When they met in Slovenia in June 2001, president George W. Bush said this about Putin: “I looked the man in the eye … I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.”

Enough said. A few years later, Russia conquered Crimea during the time of Obama. The US did nothing.

After the meeting in Alaska, Putin was the first to address the international media. He spoke about the relationship between the (then) Soviet Union and the US “during the second world war”.

But Putin made no reference to the fact that the Soviet Union was in an alliance with Nazi Germany between August 23, 1939, and Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

Trump said not very much at all but exhibited friendship to the man he called “Vladimir”.

It is too early to say what will be the outcome of the current discussions. Trump has succeeded in convincing European leaders they must do more to protect themselves. He said this during his first term, to limited effect. But now it seems most European leaders have got the message. But it would be foolish if the US deserted Ukraine.

However, there is some history here. In 1975, the US failed to honour its pledges to non-communist South Vietnam before it was conquered by communist North Vietnam in April 1975. North Vietnam was supplied by the Soviet Union. The US congress cut off support for South Vietnam.

Strelmark President and founder Hilary Fordwich discusses United States President Donald Trump’s tireless push for global peace. “This is really significant, and none of this would have happened without President Trump, because look, he wants to be the president of peace,” Ms Fordwich told Sky News Digital Presenter Gabriella Power. “You can tell that he’s out for a Nobel Peace Prize, and these European leaders, they didn’t get it done.”

There was another such instance when, during Joe Biden’s time as president, the US pushed its planned withdrawal forward from Afghanistan in August 2021, leaving many of its local supporters and much weaponry to the Taliban.

And now there’s Ukraine. Under the Budapest Memorandum of December 1994, Ukraine agreed to eliminate nuclear weapons. It had the world’s third biggest nuclear arsenal at the time. An agreement was reached that Russia, the US and Britain would ensure Ukraine’s security. However, Russia invaded Crimea in 2014 and is now at war with Ukraine again. It might not have done so if Ukraine was a nuclear power.

It appears that the nations of the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) along with Poland are reassessing their attitude to landmines in the face of Russia’s aggression. All four nations were victims of the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

The Baltic states were taken into the Soviet Union and Poland was invaded by Germany in the west and Russia in the east. All four nations are considering withdrawing from the 1999 Ottawa Convention that bans landmines. They need this protection against a Russian invasion.

Meanwhile the Australian-founded International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons is unlikely to gain any recruits among the nations threatened by Putin’s Russia. ICAN won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.