How Donald Trump can make history and win 3 Nobel Peace Prizes

President-elect Donald Trump, with a policy of peace through strength and a Republican Senate behind him, will be the first United States president in decades who is positioned to resolve three major world crises, persuade the Senate to ratify major new treaties and garner three Nobel Peace Prizes, while saving the United States treasury over a trillion dollars.  

Trump can do this by addressing the deepest and most dangerous cause of global instability – nuclear weapons. In 1990, in his first interview about running for president, Donald Trump articulated the challenge. “I’ve always thought about the issue of nuclear war; it’s a very important element in my thought process. It’s the ultimate, the ultimate catastrophe, the biggest problem this world has, and nobody’s focusing on the nuts and bolts of it. It’s a little like sickness. People don’t believe they’re going to get sick until they do. Nobody wants to talk about it. I believe the greatest of all stupidities is people’s believing it will never happen, because everybody knows how destructive it will be, so nobody uses [nuclear] weapons. What bulls**t.”  

Trump’s focus on nuclear “nuts and bolts” is exactly the path to major breakthroughs in world peace. Nuclear weapons are at the core of the world’s most dangerous conflicts. The scientific side of nuclear arms control is part of my own expertise; I and others have contributed to advances in technical methods for the United States, Russia and other nations to verify one another’s nuclear disarmament without revealing any information or having to trust one another.  

CHINA WARNS US TO STOP ARMING TAIWAN AFTER BIDEN APPROVES $571M IN MILITARY AID

Now the time is ripe for three political breakthroughs. Trump has a historic chance to lead those breakthroughs and to earn three times as many Nobel Peace Prizes as have ever been awarded to any individual. 

1. The prize for peace and stability in Europe  

The war in Ukraine is putting Europe on the edge of nuclear catastrophe, in part because of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling — but also because of the underlying threat that led him to invade Ukraine in the first place. The collapse of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty in 2019 was the source of the underlying threat, and Ukraine was its collateral damage.  

If Ukraine were to join NATO, and were armed with nuclear weapons, it would be positioned to decapitate the Russian leadership in Moscow with a nuclear strike using intermediate-range missiles that can reach their targets in 10 minutes. This kind of challenge to strategic stability was the reason that President Ronald Reagan and Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev originally signed the INF Treaty in 1987.  

The treaty cannot be revived and need not be. It banned all short-range and intermediate-range conventional and nuclear-armed missiles fielded by the United States or the Soviet Union anywhere in the world (e.g., including in the Far East). What is necessary for strategic stability in Europe now is that the United States and Russia agree not to station nuclear weapons of any type in Europe, from Iceland to the Ural Mountains, far to the east of Moscow. 

Getting this nuclear threat under control again could turn a widely expected territorial settlement between Russia and Ukraine into a lasting peace. Under the terms of this new deal, NATO (including Britain and France) would also agree not to station nuclear weapons of any type in Ukraine or in states bordering the Baltic Sea. The treaty, and agreed borders for Ukraine, would be guaranteed by both the United States and Russia. 

These steps would stop the loss of many lives, dramatically improve security in Europe, and save the United States treasury tens of billions of dollars. 

2. The prize for ‘averting a three-way nuclear arms race’   

A new three-way nuclear arms race among the United States, Russia and China has begun to spiral out of control. The United States is spending over a trillion dollars to modernize and improve our nuclear arsenal and our continental ballistic missile defense, while Russia and China are modernizing their own arsenals. 

There are three root causes for this. The first is the potential that the United States could develop a defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). It is unlikely that such a defense would ever work to protect the United States against an attack from Russia or China, but it is also unlikely that Russia and China can ever be certain of this.  

A second root cause of the new nuclear arms race is the presence of easily targeted silo-based ICBMs. These can be found on Google Maps and so can and would be targeted in the first spasm of a global nuclear war, for the attacker to “limit damage” to their homeland. 

This satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows damaged buildings at Iran’s Parchin military base outside of Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. An Israeli attack on Iran damaged facilities at a secretive military base southeast of the Iranian capital that experts in the past have linked to Tehran’s onetime nuclear weapons program and at another base tied to its ballistic missile program, satellite photos analyzed Sunday by The Associated Press show. The damaged structures are in the bottom right corner and bottom center of the image. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)

ICBM silos require targeting with more than one warhead, and so lead to arms race instability, where for every silo-based missile I install, you must install more than one opposing missile. Or we can all install more than one warhead per missile, leading to another ratchet up in the race. 

A third cause of the three-way arms race is the potential for new sea-launched, nuclear-armed, cruise missiles or massive nuclear torpedoes. These could result in sudden decapitating strikes on Beijing, Moscow or Washington. 

This situation requires a big new bargain among the three countries, a deal Trump is uniquely positioned to strike. Under a major new treaty, the United States should propose setting a verifiable limit on the number of its ICBM defense launchers, in trade for limits on the unconventional new nuclear weapons being developed by Russia and China to circumvent these defenses – nuclear-powered cruise missiles and fractional orbital bombardment systems. 

The three countries should also agree to eliminate their easily targeted silo-based ICBMs. The United States and Russia currently each have about 400 warheads installed on such missiles, and China has similar ambitions. Sea-launched nuclear-armed cruise missiles and massive nuclear torpedoes should be banned as well.  

Finally, we should all three agree on a common nuclear declaratory policy, stating, for example, that we would “only consider the use of nuclear weapons in the case of an imminent threat to the very existence of our states or those of our allies.” 

These measures would dramatically increase the security of the United States and the world. They would save the United States treasury well over a trillion dollars. 

3. The biggest prize, for ‘peace in the Middle East’  

The ultimate threat to peace in the Middle East is a regional nuclear arms race. While the 2015 Iran deal cannot be revived, a weakened Iran could be pressured to accept a much simpler, but tougher, version that would limit uranium enrichment in Iran to less than 5%. This would be accompanied by verification measures along the lines of those in the original deal, but without sunset clauses. 

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION

Full compliance with these measures would bring Iran gradual sanctions relief according to an agreed timetable. This is a simple, fair deal that would give Iran its stated goal of enriching uranium for power plant fuel, while making any breakout to nuclear weapons starkly obvious. Indeed, similar enrichment arrangements could be made available to other states that join the Abraham Accords, which could be progressively widened. 

A third cause of the three-way arms race is the potential for new sea-launched, nuclear-armed, cruise missiles or massive nuclear torpedoes. These could result in sudden decapitating strikes on Beijing, Moscow or Washington. 

A region free of the threat of Iranian nuclear breakout, and the pressure on Saudi Arabia and other nations to respond in kind, is a necessary precursor to finally defusing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  

In this environment, the countries of an expanded Abraham Accords could turn their attention to rebuilding Gaza, and Israel could accept a two-state solution, on a timetable tied to the achievement of agreed milestones in Palestinian self-governance. To make this palatable to Israel, the United States would need to provide Israel with a treaty-based security guarantee.  

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Such agreements would settle the most volatile region in the world, bringing peace and prosperity where there has been endless conflict and suffering. 

Trump has been concerned throughout his public career with the greatest threat to human survival: nuclear weapons. He has a unique chance to protect the United States and the world from them. He would richly deserve the Nobel Peace Prizes that he would surely be awarded if he succeeds in this endeavor.