#Trump meets the Nobel Peace Prize criteria — but still won’t win

If Alfred Nobel had any say in the matter, President Donald Trump would be a top contender for the peace prize that bears the long-dead Swedish industrialist’s name.

“Trump is actually exactly what Alfred Nobel wanted for his peace champions,” author Unni Turrettini told The Post.

Unlike any laureate before him, Trump has attained all four of the criteria that Nobel laid out in his 1895 will, which established the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump has promoted fellowship among nations via the Abraham Accords between Israel and its Arab neighbors; he has reduced the American military footprint overseas; and he has sponsored peace negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo — accomplishing all of this in the past year, the fourth element of Nobel’s instructions.

Any one of those achievements, by the terms of Nobel’s will, would make Trump a worthy laureate. This year, four official nominators announced that they have submitted applications on Trump’s behalf for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.

“But I would say the chances of him winning are slim to none,” Turrettini said — because the award known as “the world’s most prestigious prize” has been hopelessly politicized for more than a century.

In “Betraying the Nobel” (Pegasus), out Tuesday, Turrettini explains how Alfred Nobel’s idealistic aims were thwarted, starting soon after his death in 1896.

Nobel’s will gave Norway’s parliament, the Storting, the job of selecting a five-person committee that would choose laureates for an annual Peace Prize, funded by his estate.

But the Storting stocked the committee with current and former politicians, making it a creature of Norway’s governing elite — not the nonpartisan institution that Nobel intended.

Inevitably, the Peace Prize “became a political award,” Turrettini said, “supporting Norwegian foreign policies and following the Norwegian government’s leanings.” The committee almost immediately abandoned Nobel’s peace criteria for its own, endlessly malleable definition.

“It’s been: We’ll do exactly what we want and we’ll call it peace,” she said.

The 1906 prize given to Theodore Roosevelt launched the committee’s love-hate relationship with the United States.

“Sometimes the prize has been a strategic selection to strengthen ties with the US,” Turrettini explained.

Nobel Peace Prizes for Woodrow Wilson, Henry Kissinger and others were olive branches offered to America’s ruling class.

But at other times, the prize has been an outright rebuke of a hated American president like George W. Bush.

“The committee made five selections” — including the prizes for Jimmy Carter and Al Gore — “as a slap in the face to him,” Turrettini said.

“The last one in the series came in 2009, the award to Barack Obama,” given just months after Obama replaced Bush in the White House.

“They clearly stated that choice was a signal to the world that this is the kind of man we want as a leader in the United States: someone who is more cooperative and more to the liking of the European and Norwegian political elites.”

Trump is far from the committee’s ideal American president.

“His rhetoric, and dare I say his abrasive and perhaps divisive leadership style — it rubs the committee the wrong way,” Turrettini said.

Worse, from the committee’s perspective, Trump represents the rise of a populism that challenges globalist presumptions. Three of Trump’s four Nobel nominations were filed by politicians from upstart nationalist parties in Norway, Sweden and Finland.

“Norway’s elite continues to have an unwavering faith in the United Nations and a hope for a global government,” Turrettini said.

“But people are tired of a political elite that is not connected to those they are supposed to serve,” she said, pointing to Trump’s election, the Brexit movement in Great Britain, and similar populist protests throughout Europe.

If Trump wins re-election and remains in office for four more years, dismissing his genuine peace achievements could put the Peace Prize’s own legitimacy at risk, she warned.

“I think the committee is going to lose more and more credibility,” Turrettini said, “unless they get on track with the intentions and the values of Alfred Nobel.

“And those are not necessarily the same values as the Norwegian government.”