EXCLUSIVE: "President Trump can win a Nobel Peace Prize": American, foreign leaders reflect on Trump's first 100 days
THE LOWDOWN:
President Donald Trump “can win a Nobel Peace Prize if he [brings] peace to the Middle East,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R., Ind.) told the Washington Reporter.
President Trump’s second term hit its first 100 days mark on Tuesday.
Several foreign leaders reflected on the president’s second first 100 days and gave rave reviews.
Saul Anuzis, the President of the International Institute, told the Reporter that Trump’s foreign policy, while unconventional, is “exactly what the world needs right now.”
President Donald Trump “can win a Nobel Peace Prize if he [brings] peace to the Middle East,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R., Ind.) told the Washington Reporter in an interview in advance of Trump’s second first 100 days in the White House.
Stutzman joined with congressional Republicans including Rep. Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.) in believing that Trump should likely earn the prestigious award. On a recent trip to Syria to meet with the new president, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, Stutzman came face-to-face with Trump’s legacy in the Middle East.
“As I was driving through Damascus, there were signs that said ‘Make Syria Great Again,’ because [Trump] didn’t bomb Idlib even though he was being encouraged to,” Stutzman said. There is an “incredible opportunity for peace in the Middle East, now that the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad is gone — without a bullet being fired,” he added.
And despite the “checkered past” of President Al-Sharaa, Stutzman noted that Syria’s new leader “was open to the Abraham Accords,” one of the signature accomplishments of Trump’s first term.
“Trump envisioned and led the Abraham Accords. They wouldn’t have happened without him,” Bonnie Glick, a former senior Trump national security official, told the Reporter. “No other leader ever had the ability to think so broadly and boldly.”
“And he set a new land speed record for making deals. In the last quarter of his first term he signed four Middle East peace agreements. Prior to that there had been only two over more than 40 years. Watching what he does this time around the world and how he expands his diplomatic efforts may well be worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize,” Glick continued.
The opportunity is there to remake the Middle East in part because of how the Ukrainians have sapped Russia’s forces in the yearslong war.
“There has to be some thanks to the Ukrainians for their fight against Putin,” Stutzman said. Across the world, foreign leaders echoed much of what Stutzman said in their remarks to the Reporter about what Trump’s second term can mean for the world.
“As someone who witnessed first-hand President Trump's dedicated effort to bring parties together within the Abraham Accords framework during his first term, I can say that his instinct is to work for peace and reach agreements,” Elin Suleymanov, Azerbaijan’s ambassador to America during Trump’s first term and current ambassador to the United Kingdom for his nation, told the Reporter.
“President Trump has also been most supportive of Trans-Caspian cooperation and projects championed by Azerbaijan as part of global energy's security infrastructure,” Suleymanov continued. “After all, the Southern Gas Corridor, one of the world’s energy mega-projects, was completed during his term in the office.”
Murad Muradov, the Deputy Director at the Topchubashov Center — an independent think tank based in Baku, Azerbaijan — said that “Trump’s victory was met with optimism in Baku, and President [Ilham] Aliyev shortly before the inauguration claimed that he has high expectations for the new government, and expressed hope for establishing much more sincere and effective cooperation with Washington.”
“He was especially outspoken on the point that the new administration, in contrast to its predecessors, shares traditional values,” Muradov said.
In contrast with what Muradov has seen from Trump, he said that “we in Azerbaijan have faced significant pressures from most Democratic administrations, including during Joe Biden’s presidency — related to our conflict with Armenia, democratic credentials, and our image as a petrostate.”
“Traditionally backed by the Armenian lobby, the Democratic Party on many occasions leaned against Azerbaijan, to the extent that in 2023, we were put on the list of the countries violating religious freedoms despite the fact that religious tolerance has always been a matter of our particular pride,” Muradov continued.
Other European leaders told the Reporter that Trump will be able to force the European Union and NATO to live up to their obligations. Lithuania’s Foreign Minister, Kestutis Budrys, told the Reporter that “President Trump’s encouragement of NATO allies to boost their spending on defense has brought actual results and is making the Alliance stronger.”
Budrys added that “Lithuania shares the view of President Trump that NATO should be the greatest deterring force and for that, each and every ally must demonstrate commitment to collective defense through investment.”
“Lithuania is contributing to that with our own commitment to spend above 5 percent GDP on defense next year, [more than any other NATO member,” Budrys said.
“With Donald Trump, finally the European hour has arrived to assume a duty of care for defense commensurate to its economic and social model and taking over responsibility for Ukraine’s secure future within the EU and NATO,” Vygaudas Ušackas, Lithuania’s former Foreign Minister, told the Reporter.
“President Donald Trump has done more than anyone else during the last 75 years of NATO’s existence: he has awakened European countries from complacency and sleepwalking into geopolitical irrelevance by underspending on defense, relying on Russian gas, and not taking care over EU’s and Ukraine’s security,” Ušackas continued.
Trump, who has fashioned himself as a peacemaker during his second term, is working to end several conflicts around the globe that erupted during President Joe Biden’s tenure in office. Several world leaders, like Përparim Rama, the Mayor of Pristina in Kosovo, told the Reporter that “seeing President Trump's leadership, willingness and resolve to end conflicts around the globe, I am positive that the Balkans has a promising future ahead.”
Rama said that “Kosovo is thankful for President Trump’s and United States of America leadership on the global stage, adding that “President's Trump engagement in the Balkans serves as continued assurance of long-lasting peace in our region.”
Closer to home, Sean Astwood, the former Deputy Premier of the Turks and Caicos Islands, told the Reporter that Trump’s “first 100 days reveal a leader unafraid to shake up the status quo, offering Caribbean countries a chance to engage with a bold partner eager to forge new opportunities and strengthen ties beyond traditional boundaries.”
More broadly, foreign policy experts like Dr. Marios Efthymiopoulos, the CEO of Strategy International based in Cyprus, told the Reporter that “Donald Trump has set yet again the U.S. on a global epicenter stage.”
Trump has done that, Efthymiopoulos explained, via “an upscaled format of diplomacy and security without alike historical precedent of action, through an ultra-modern and dimensional ecosystem, where politics meets trade, technology, and economics, unlike no other.”
Saul Anuzis, the President of the International Institute, told the Reporter that Trump’s foreign policy, while unconventional, is “exactly what the world needs right now.”
“Those who think they can play Trump, are playing with fire,” Anuzis said.
Anuzis, the former chair of the Michigan Republican Party, added that on his travels, he “hear[s] all the time from leaders of countries across the world that Trump is exactly what they wanted to see out of the United States.”
“While they may not agree with his every move, or even understand everything that comes out of the White House, there is near-universal recognition that what the world saw out of Biden was unsustainable,” he said.
Trump, Anuzis said, “is the breath of fresh air the world didn’t know it needed.”