The fuss about the Nobel Peace Prize has always been excessively outsized to its relevance. Like most prizes, the panel is bound to have its treasure trove of prejudices and eccentricities in reaching any decision. Thin resumes have swayed the Norwegian committee to acts of dottiness. Surprising moments of dark humour have made an appearance in the award of the prize to warmongers and those antithetical to peace. And those on the Nobel Prize peace panel would barely cause a murmur of acknowledgement outside the spine-like length of that country of only 5.6 million inhabitants. (The current membership of five features, for instance, three politicians: Anne Enger, former leader of the country’s Centre Party; former Conservative Party education minister Kristin Clement, and former state secretary of the Labour Party, Gry Larsen.)
Rather feebly, Asle Toje, another member of the five, uses a gastronomic metaphor in describing the selection process: “We do it pretty much the same way you make a good sauce – you reduce and reduce and reduce.” The reduction formula leads to surprising, rancid results. In 1973, the ruthless, toadying poseur Henry Kissinger was overcome with joy in receiving the prize. The National Security Adviser and US Secretary of State had supposedly done much to advance the cause of peace in the Indochina conflict by “spearheading cease-fire negotiations” that led to an armistice in January 1973. His co-awardee, the North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho, was far more sensible, refusing to accept a peace award where there was no peace to be had.
The choice of Kissinger was almost mockingly ghoulish. This was the same man who left his marks all over secret and illegal bombing campaigns in Laos and Cambodia during the Nixon administration, oversaw the extinction of democratically elected governments in Latin America in favour of murderous, authoritarian regimes, and spent his early academic career arguing that small-scale nuclear might be feasibly pursued by the United States as a psychological lever.
The selection for 2025 was always going to be shadowed by the theatre known as the Donald Trump show. In claiming not to want it, the US President has done much to pad out his credentials to make himself eligible. He has put on an incomplete, disputable show of halting conflicts while indulging in spells of violence (strikes on Venezuelan shipping, ostensibly carrying drugs to the US; the illegal bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities).
What the committee has done is the next best (or worse) thing. In opting for María Corina Machado, seen as the main figure of the Venezuelan opposition to the current government of Nicolás Maduro, they have offered the prize to a Trump medium. “I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support in our cause,” she cooed on X.
Almost hinting at something in the works – that is to say, the ongoing regime change agenda so enthusiastically sought by Washington – Machado was convinced of being “on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our principal allies to achieve freedom and democracy.” Given Latin America’s record on peaceful transitions from coups, this was fine humour indeed.
The award to Machado was, according to the Nordic wiseacres, based on her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” They go on to be didactic, talking about democracy being in global retreat, with Machado being its illuminating defender. (On being barred from running, she installed the surrogate opposition leader Edmundo Gonzálezwho allegedly won the July 2024 election.)
This is the bromide of binary thought. Machado’s record, befitting most political records, is untidy. David Smilde, a student of Venezuelan politics, sees her as “a controversial pick, less a peace activist than a political operator willing to use some of the trade’s dark arts for the greater democratic good.” Even that might be generous.
For one thing, she is clearly biding her time, shunning local and regional elections, treating the honouring of the 2024 presidential election results as absolute. She has openly argued for the necessity of foreign intervention in removing Maduro and endorsed Trump’s military buildup in the Caribbean, calling the recent bombing of suspected drug boats a matter of “saving lives”. To remove Maduro was essential, she argues, because of his alleged credentials as “the head of a narco-terrorist structure of cooperation.”
Disingenuously, she has swallowed the dubious theory that Maduro is the true figure running the Tren de Aragua gang, which Trump accuses of directing operations against the United States. Her Vente Venezuela party has enthusiastically shared the threats by US officials against supposed Venezuelan drug traffickers on X. “If you’re in the Caribbean,” states one recent post, “if you’re north of Venezuela and you’re trying to traffic drugs to the US, you’re a legitimate target for the US.”
Machado is undoubtedly readying herself to step into any presidential vacancy, forced or otherwise. She claims to have a plan for the first 100 hours and the first 100 days of a transition process, promising the generation of wealth for the country to the value of $1.7 trillion over 15 years. Her advisor on international affairs, Pedro Urruchurtu, has been open about communicating with the Trump administration over Maduro’s removal.
Again, this says much about the eccentric reading of peace embraced by the insular Norwegian grandees. If Tom Lehrer was right to call political satire obsolete after Kissinger’s award, it would also be accurate to say that instances of rich farce have come in its wake.
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Great article Binoy, it was a sop to Trump and the US.
What would be the analogy in Australia? As in Australian of the year, or the like.
Michele Rowlings for services to gambling reform (nominated by Sportsbet)?
Murray Watt for services to the environment (nominated by Woodside)?
Madelaine King for services to the fossil fuel industry (nominated by Inpex)?
Chris Minns for services to the safety of citizens (nominated by Zionists)?
Richard Marles for services to the US Military-Industrial complex (nominated by Pete Hegseth as soon as the cheque went through)?
Penny Wong for services to victim blaming (nominated by Ben-Gvir)?
Mark Dreyfus for services to boot cleanliness (nominated by Netanyahu)?
Tanya Plibersek for the protection of endangered species (nominated by a passing Maugean skate)?
Tony Burke for protection of the integrity of creative arts (nominated by the Zionist lobby)?
Clare O’Neill for services to housing (nominated by the banking industry, the Real Estates agents assoc., the land developers industry, and landlords)?
Don Farrell for services in electoral reform (nominated by the Society against free elections)?
Anthony Albanese for services to parrot inpersonation (nominated by Netanyahu)?
Tanya Plibersek for services to acrobatics (nominated by the Greens)?
Anne Aly for services to the protection of early childhood (nominated by a leading Canberran dust removalist)?
Chris Bowen for services to energy prices (nominated by Santos)?
Madelaine King for services to the removal of litter from the sea (nominated by Chevron)?
Malarndirri McCarthy for services to ancient indigenous rock art (nominated by Woodside)?
Pat Conroy for services to the secrecy of nuclear waste disposal (nominated by the US and UK ministries of defence)?
Jason Clare for services to private school privilege (nominated by Kings College)
The campaign by Machado against the 2024 Venezuelan election result, claiming the result was fraudulent, is nonsense.
Over 700 international observers were present at the time. Including the US National Lawyers Guild, who sent monitors to Venezuela and found no evidence of electoral fraud.
Quite the opposite.
The Guild reported that they had “observed a transparent, fair voting process with scrupulous attention to legitimacy, access to the polls, and pluralism”.
One of the 700 international observers of the Venezuelan election reports that “the system is designed to be fraud-free. For example, a voter entering the booth must provide a biometric thumbprint to prevent double voting and to confirm voter registration, ensuring only qualified citizens can vote.
Next, we see the voter enter a booth where we witness a modern, state-of-the-art electronic touchscreen voting machine. The voter touches their choice. Does the electronic ballot disappear into the mechanical system? No, on the contrary, it prints out a paper trail of the mechanical vote so that the citizen can verify that the printed ballot matches the touchscreen vote. If it does not, the touchscreen option will reappear.
According to our local election officials hosts, when questioned, it almost never happens that there is a discrepancy; however, if the voter believes they have made a mistake in the selection, another touchscreen vote is allowed, also subject to a paper trail certification.
The electronic machines are not online during voting to prevent hacking and tampering.
The voter then goes to another booth to drop the ballot into a small ballot box. At the close of the voting, each political party has the right to send a witness to observe the counting of the paper tabs and the mechanical results to verify that they match.
To ensure quick election night results and avoid speculation and chaos, only a randomly selected 54% of polling stations undergo both mechanical and paper counts. The goal is to verify that they match. If there are no glitches or errors on that day, the system is considered trustworthy. Therefore, the remainder of the vote count is based on the mechanical system only.
Once the count is done, each of the political parties must sign off if there is no discrepancy, but if there is, it can be challenged and only when it is resolved do they sign off.”
I think the sanctimonious liberal democracies that disparage the Venezuelan system could learn a thing or two about democracy from those they target.
And it shows the dubious standards of the Nobel selection process, that a prize is awarded to one with no interest in peace at all.
Thank you, Binoy, and also thanks to Gonggongche and Steve Davis for exposing the farcical nature of the Nobel peace award.
But I do complain. Binoy – you are too kind to María Corina Machado. She had no problem with the bombing of Venezualan fishermen supposed to be drug traffickers, and Machado indeed incited this violence. She wrote to Mauricio Macri, President of Argentina, and to Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, to ask them “to apply their force and influence to advance in the dismantling of the criminal Venezuelan regime, intimately linked to drug trafficking and terrorism.” She justified her letter by saying Venezuela’s ties to Iran posed a direct threat to Israel. She provided the encouragement for Trump’s illegal attack on those boats. Michelle Ellner, writing in Codepink sums Machado up – “the smiling face of Washington’s regime-change” and “part of a global alliance between fascism, Zionism, and neoliberalism,
machine”. https://www.codepink.org/nobel_peace_prize_peace_has_lost_its_meaning
Great article, great comments.
Nobel Peace prize ………… who are they trying to kid?!
I like it.
Great article & comments.
What a bloody farce. And it’s ordinary Venezualans that will suffer at the brutal hands of the ‘west’, in its obsession for commercial control of illicit drugs & oil.