President Donald Trump has received a third nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, this time from a quartet of Australian law professors who lauded his reduction of American overseas military involvement, brokering Middle East peace agreements, and increasing energy independence to lessen the need for military intervention.
The nomination comes following nods by parliamentarians from Norway and Sweden earlier this month who cited the Middle East and Balkans peace agreements.
"He went ahead and negotiated against all advice, but he did it with common sense," Australian law professor David Flint told Sky News in Australia. "He negotiated directly with the Arab states concerned and Israel and brought them together."
Flint, an academic who is the national convenor for the Australians for Constitutional Monarchy among other titles, particularly cited Trump's involvement in the normalizing of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, which was later joined by fellow Persian Gulf state Bahrain.
"He has, firstly, common sense, and he is only guided by national interest . . . and therefore an interest in the western alliance," Flint said. "What he has done with the Trump Doctrine is that he has decided he would no longer have America in endless wars, wars which achieve nothing but the killing of thousands of young Americans.
"So, he's reducing America's tendency to get involved in any and every war. The states are lining up, Arab and Middle Eastern, to join that network of peace which will dominate the Middle East. He is really producing peace in the world in a way in a which none of his predecessors did, and he fully deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
"He's also been the first American president to work out how to make America energy independent of the Middle East."
Flint and his colleagues join Norwegian member of parliament Christian Tybring-Gjedde, who also cited the Israel-UAE-Bahrain deal, and Magnus Jacobsson of the Swedish parliament, who hailed Trump's involvement in normalizing economic relations between Kosovo and Serbia.
Former Vice President and democratic nominee for president Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin also have been nominated for the award.