The Nobel Peace Prize Has a Credibility Problem—Welcome to the Club, Machado

Maria Corina Machado is now a Nobel laureate with her win arriving on the heels of months of lobbying by Donald Trump. From boasting of ending seven wars, which included making tenuous headway towards peace in Gaza, to gathering endorsements from global leaders, and even calling Norway’s finance minister for his support, there is little Trump has not done to assert his claim—seemingly all for naught when Machado was selected instead. But is her win truly more palatable? What does this reveal about the Nobel Peace Committee’s structural inconsistencies?

The Committee is no stranger to controversy. Alfred Nobel’s last will reserves the peace prize for  “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses,” raising the question of whether a laureate's efforts for peace excuse their acts of violence. The uncomfortable answer is yes; historical record shows that the Committees have decided that the ends justify the means, even at a staggering human cost.

Henry Kissinger, for example, is one of the most infamous laureates. Awarded in 1973 for ending the Vietnam War, he had actually derailed previous attempts at a ceasefire by Lyndon B Johnson, prolonging the war. Prior to his win, as National Security Advisor to Richard Nixon, he oversaw the carpet-bombing of hundreds of thousands in Cambodia. Anti-American sentiment put in motion the rise of the communist Khmer Rouge regime that caused the genocide of two million Cambodians. In Bangladesh, he supported Pakistan’s massacre of anywhere from 300,000 to 3 million civilians in the 1971 struggle for independence. If the peace prize were to have encouraged a change in ideology, it failed: in 1975, he approved Indonesia’s military dictator General Suharto’s invasion of East Timor that killed 200,000 people. Kissinger’s diplomacy was rooted in violence—a fact the Nobel Committee overlooked in favour of a single, contestable achievement.

Other Nobel Peace Prize laureates with checkered pasts include the joint winners of the 1994 prize for overseeing peace in the Levant—Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres. Arafat’s key position in Palestinian leadership was rife with accounts of militant activity, including his supposed involvement in the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre and other terror attacks by the Black September organisation. Shimon Peres was the architect of Israel’s secret nuclear weapons programme in the 1960s. Here again, the Committee was willing to gamble that, regardless of the background of the engineers, rewarding peace efforts would inspire continued dialogue. It was a bet that in hindsight appears not to have paid off.

Beyond the suitability of the laureates, the timing of awards is variable. Just eight months into his presidency, Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”. However, in the two months before his acceptance at Oslo, Obama had already signed off on a 30,000 troop increase in Afghanistan, undermining any expectations of an anti-war leadership. In his two terms as president, Obama authorized 563 drone strikes that led to 3,797 casualties. Looking back on the premature decision, ex-Nobel Secretary Geir Lundestad admitted that “the committee hoped the award would strengthen Mr Obama”. 

The Committee appears to have employed similar logic with Machado, a right-wing politician, who was selected partly for her “struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy”. Machado's career began while Hugo Chávez was Venezuela’s president. Democratically elected, after two failed coups, Chávez, a left-wing authoritarian, curtailed free press, undermined judicial authority, and threatened human rights defenders. In opposition to this hegemony, Machado was involved in the 2002 coup, where she signed the infamous Carmona decree that erased Venezuela’s Constitution and disbanded public institutions. The Committee’s choice here reveals a troubling contradiction: they have rewarded someone who responds to authoritarianism by completely demolishing democratic institutions. The peace prize has previously gone to coup architects, like Anwar Sadat, but since this year’s provisions are for a transition to democracy, the logic is puzzling.

Since Chávez’s death in 2013, Nicolás Maduro has been the president of Venezuela. His leadership is increasingly corrupt; the economy has collapsed and millions have emigrated in search of stability. Most recently, his victory in the 2024 elections has been contested. Tensions flared in 2014 and 2017 with the LaSalida anti-government protests. Machado was among the architects of these seemingly peaceful demonstrations that actually utilized violent guarimba tactics, including torchings, beatings, and murders, leaving dozens dead—with far-right protesters responsible for approximately half the deaths. The pattern is familiar: violence masquerading as peaceful protest, with the Committee apparently satisfied to accept the masking.

Her associations are also far from peaceful. In 2018, Machado appealed to Netanyahu for Israel’s help in overthrowing the Venezuelan government. She has repeatedly championed US military intervention and sanctions, describing Trump as the “biggest opportunity we’ve ever had” for regime change. In the months leading up to the announcement of this prize, Machado stood by Trump’s illegal bombing of Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean that killed at least twenty-one people; believed to be drug traffickers, some were mere fishermen. That Machado could publicly condone extrajudicial killings—especially those of civilians—and still be celebrated for a peaceful transition discloses the emptiness of the peace prize’s reasoning.

Immediately after her victory, Machado partially dedicated her prize to Trump “for his decisive support of our cause”, claiming that he “deserved” it instead. Nominations from Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other Republican Congressmen suggest that this news must come as the next best alternative to a Trump victory, so if the Nobel Committee were attempting to subvert Washington’s expectations and make a political statement, they failed. Machado is ostensibly espousing a “peaceful transition”, but by allying with Trump, who proclaims that Maduro’s removal “has to be done with the use of force”, she is inching towards civil war. Once again, the Nobel Committee has acted in favour of regime change politics, choosing to reward the rhetoric of peace while ignoring its violent undercurrents. 

Norwegian lawyer Fredrik Heffermehl alleges that over half of all prizes handed out since the Second World War are illegal, due to deviations from the spirit of the Nobel Prize. According to him, only 13 per cent of laureates since 2000 have been legitimate. Whether or not you accept this strict interpretation, the general argument prevails: the Nobel Peace Prize has veered from its original mission of promoting disarmament and anti-militarism to a tool of endorsing realpolitik. The very fact that Trump, who frequently expresses militarist and nationalist rhetoric, was considered for the Peace Prize speaks volumes about the Committee’s distorted interests. 

By rewarding Maria Corina Machado for being a “champion of peace,” the committee has rewarded Trump and every other authoritarian right-wing leader, but this does not come as a surprise when war criminals like Kissinger have made the cut. Machado is merely perpetuating the Peace Prize pattern of unreliability. The basis for this particular award is inherently fallacious: it pedestalises individuals—flawed individuals. Promoting peace is not an isolated event, unlike the discovery of a molecular framework or a piece of exceptional literature that are disparate from the actions of the laureate. Since it cannot be revoked, the award faces an impossible dilemma. If intended as a recognition of peaceful progress, actions of individuals following the award risk undermining its integrity. If intended as an incentive for peace, in the case of Obama and now Machado, its success is unconvincing. So should this award even exist? In response to Machado’s win, Trump’s envoy to Venezuela Richard Grenell dismissed the prize as having “died years ago” —conveniently after all his party’s campaigning efforts. Hypocrisy aside, he’s right, and this year’s laureate is the final nail in the coffin of the Committee’s credibility. Perhaps the Nobel Peace Prize must finally rest.