U.S. President Donald Trump's historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Tuesday in Singapore may have put him on the path to win the Nobel Peace Prize, diplomats and experts said, although the honor may elude him if Kim falters on his end of the deal.
On Tuesday, one of Britain's largest bookmakers Ladbrokes said the odds of Trump winning a solo or joint prize this year were up to 6/4 from 10/1 before the summit. The William Hill agency offered odds of 6/4 on Trump and Kim to win jointly, either in 2018 or 2019.
"Love him or loathe him, Trump has made history where others have failed," said Jessica Bridge of Ladbrokes.
In their meeting, Trump and Kim pledged to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and Washington committed to providing security guarantees for its old enemy.
While a Nobel award would dismay Trump's critics, he also has some high-profile supporters. South Korean President Moon Jae-in said in April that Trump deserved the prize.
However, some members of the five-strong Norwegian Nobel Committee, which chooses the winner of the $1 million prize each October, have criticized Trump in the past.
In 2015, Nobel committee member Thorbjoern Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister who heads the Council of Europe, tweeted, "Donald Trump you may have set the news agenda but at what cost? Divisive and irresponsible from a presidential hopeful."
Last December, he wrote, "Trump is insulting Muslims on Twitter" and by contrast praised former President Barack Obama, who won the 2009 prize, as a statesman. Jagland declined to comment on Trump's chances after the summit.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee's vice-chair, Henrik Syse, wrote in a blog in December 2016 that "President-elect Donald Trump has, with his rhetoric, lowered the threshold for moral decency so far it is downright scary."
Syse said his writings as a political philosopher and commentator "should in no way be read as comments pertaining to the prize or to our process in what is a five-person committee."
Asle Toje, appointed to the committee this year, wrote an opinion piece in a Norwegian newspaper in 2017 telling Norwegians they were too negative toward Trump. His headline: "Trump is no Hitler."
He declined to comment on Tuesday. The remaining two committee members appear not to have written publicly about Trump.
The committee's secretary, Olav Njoelstad, said that "it is not impossible" for someone who has been criticized by committee members to be considered – and even win – the prize.
Henrik Urdal, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, said nuclear disarmament on the Korean Peninsula "would be a very significant achievement and the committee would have to consider it" for an award.
But he said the committee would also take into account Trump's wider record, such as pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, planning to quit the Paris climate agreement and trade disputes with allies.
Former Deputy Foreign Minister and Ambassador to the U.S. Danny Ayalon said that while he found it difficult to believe the Europeans would be able to hold their noses and support Trump receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, selecting another figure would harm the prestige of the award.
Ayalon said European leaders were averse to Trump because "he put a mirror to their faces. He showed them the weakness of their diplomatic and military actions and put U.S. interests ahead of Europe's. Trump told European leaders he was no longer willing to defend them without their paying [in return]."
Ayalon also noted Europeans traditionally had negative views of American leaders, with the exception of Obama, whom the Nobel committee selected for the peace prize for what Danon said amounted to "bending America's will to that of Europe."
Dr. Avi Primor, a former Israeli ambassador to the EU, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany, who now heads the Israeli Council on Foreign Relations and Tel Aviv University's European Studies program, said that "the Europeans now regret that Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, and he also regrets he received the prize.
"They ultimately saw he didn't do anything and have therefore learned a lesson and they will wait and see what happens between the U.S. and North Korea. If the deal advances and we really see Kim start to act according to the agreement then there is a good chance they will ultimately give him the Nobel.
Former Justice Minister Yossi Beilin said he believes that if peace efforts continue apace, both Trump and Kim could be possible contenders for the prize.
"There are still a number of months before the decision on the Nobel Peace Prize, and I believe that in these months, the prize committee will closely follow Trump and the progress of talks with North Korea. If we see the talks advance toward peace between the Koreas, something we are not seeing today, and possibly even the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, then Donald Trump will likely get the Nobel Peace Prize because he will bring about a completely new situation and a completely dramatic process."
Eran Etzion, the deputy head of the National Security Council in the Prime Minister's Office and a senior Foreign Ministry official, called the current preoccupation with the possibility of Trump winning the prize "preposterous."
Noting the North Koreans had offered Trump far less than they previously offered to former U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Etzion said the world would have to wait and see whether North Korea would in fact denuclearize, but that if so, Trump could very well be a serious contender for the prize.
Nominations for this year's prize also formally closed on Feb. 1, before the summit was agreed upon. So while Trump and Kim could be among the 330 nominees for 2018, an award linked to North Korea may be more likely in 2019.
Thousands of people are eligible to make nominations, including committee members, members of national parliaments, cabinet members, heads of universities or past laureates.
A group of 18 Republican lawmakers has nominated Trump for the prize for his efforts to denuclearize Pyongyang and bring North Korea to the negotiating table.
Even before the Singapore summit, several figures, including South Korean President Moon Jae-in, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, had suggested Trump could be deserving of the prize.
