Although the White House immediately put the Nobel Committee on notice for putting “politics over peace” when it failed to deliver the peace prize to United States President Donald Trump, the administration had to be pleased that the award went to Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado. Trump and Machado are cut from the same right-wing authoritarian cloth, which in part explains why the president quickly congratulated her, and why Machado, in turn, dedicated her award to him.
As a leader of Venezuela’s hardline right-wing opposition, Machado has been committed to a brand of peace that has sought to undermine Venezuelan democracy and sovereignty for more than a quarter of a century. In 2002, she helped orchestrate a coup against Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected president at the time. Undeterred by failure, Machado subsequently worked to build an opposition whose primary goal has been to create enough political and economic chaos to undermine the Venezuelan government and return the country to oligarchic rule. This has included mobilising violent mobs to block streets, targeting opponents, wreaking havoc on the country’s economy, and terrorising large segments of the population. More recently, Machado’s tireless pursuit of “peace” led her to ask none other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose genocide in Gaza Machado vocally supports, to bomb Venezuela in an effort to “liberate” the country.
Machado’s rise to international prominence has long been aided by Western media and political elites who frame her as a freedom fighter rather than a destabilising force. Her image has been carefully curated to appeal to the US and Europe, where right-wing populists increasingly claim the mantle of democratic renewal. By awarding her the Nobel Peace Prize, the committee has helped launder that image and reinforced the narrative that the West alone defines what counts as legitimate democracy.
What is troubling about Machado being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is not so much that the committee “got it wrong”, something it has done often enough, or even that mainstream coverage of her award has been largely uncritical. It is that, in awarding the prize to Machado, the Nobel Committee has provided an open invitation for Trump to continue, and even escalate, military intervention and gunboat diplomacy in Latin America. For Venezuela, this means violent regime change is firmly on the table.
In fact, Machado herself has suggested that the attention brought by the Nobel Peace Prize might lead to increased international intervention in Venezuela, a sabre-rattling sentiment echoed by Bret Stephens in The New York Times. This should come as no surprise, given that Machado has encouraged Trump’s ongoing illegal efforts to “combat narcotrafficking”, cheered his periodic threats of invasion, and even pushed for international sanctions that have strangled the Venezuelan economy and killed hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.
That warning already appears prescient. Just this Wednesday, The New York Times revealed that the Trump administration has authorised covert CIA operations aimed at destabilising Venezuela’s government. The disclosure confirms exactly what many feared: that rewarding Machado under the banner of “peace” would embolden Washington to pursue regime change by other means. In effect, the Nobel Committee has provided moral cover for the very interventions its prize was meant to condemn.
Put another way, the problem with Machado receiving the Nobel Peace Prize is not just that it makes a mockery of any meaningful understanding of peace. In the process, it embraces and validates the Trumpian sleight of hand by which violence not only becomes peace but, in so doing, becomes an effective tool for advancing an authoritarianism that is repackaged as democracy. Opponents are then cast as enemies of freedom who must be eliminated, the destruction of whom allows for a broader project that benefits the very rich while leaving working people in misery.
In this sense, Venezuelan sovereignty and democracy mean as little to Machado as they do to Trump. The goal and practice of right-wing authoritarianism look much the same across the Americas. It is to ensure that political power is controlled by a wealthy elite who are free to implement long-discredited economic policies designed to facilitate the upward distribution of wealth while reducing government regulation of the natural resources and public goods that support working people. Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Machado, someone who puts a democratic face on violent foreign intervention and an economic war on the poor, is not just bad for Venezuela. It is deeply disturbing for the rest of the hemisphere and the world.
