The Peace Prize That Pre-empts Peace

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The Norwegian Nobel Committee, always eager to get ahead of history, has once again jumped the shark, jumped the gun, and jumped into the fire. On October 10, it awarded Venezuela’s María Corina Machado the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for “her tireless struggle for democracy.” Admirable Orwellian rhetoric, but inconveniently; democracy in Venezuela still hasn’t happened. Machado remains in hiding; Nicolás Maduro remains in power. It’s a bit like awarding an Oscar for a film that hasn’t yet been shot.

But that’s the Nobel’s new business model: peace futures. In an age of derivative politics and algorithmic morality, the Committee no longer rewards outcomes; it rewards vibes. Incentivises imperial lackeys.

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From Kissinger to Machado: A Tradition of Cognitive Dissonance

So. A Nobel Peace Prize is fraught? If there’s something ironic about an inventor of explosives endowing a prize for peace, pity the poor committee. Peace Prizes can blow up in Nobel committee members’ faces. In 1973, they gave the Peace Prize to war criminal Henry Kissinger; architect of US secret bombing of Cambodia campaign, March 1969-March 1970. Two members of the Committee resigned in protest, while The New York Times christened it the “Nobel War Prize.” Decades later, they gave it to Barack Obama nine months into his presidency, before his drones had even finished rebooting.

The pattern is clear: the Nobel Committee loves a good narrative arc, even when reality refuses to cooperate. It prefers the performative poetry-slam of aspiration to the prose of consequence.

And now, with María Corina Machado, it’s found the perfect sequel: a neoliberal heroine whose cause can be lauded without confronting the ugly scaffolding of U.S. foreign policy propping it up.

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The Geopolitical Script Doctor

Officially, the prize honours Machado’s commitment to democratic transition. Unofficially, it doubles as a PR exercise for Washington’s hemispheric conscience. The woman who backed sanctions that worsened Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis, supported the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez, and pledged to privatise the national oil industry now embodies “peace” in the same way former drug-dealer vigilante, ex-president Duterte embodied justice in the Philippines.

Even Machado’s acceptance speech couldn’t resist the gravitational pull of Trumpism: she thanked “President Trump for his decisive support of our cause.” Is this political strategy, performance art or a streetwise nod to self-preservation? Whatever her motive, it cements the surreal impression that this year’s Nobel is the Trump Award you get when you’re not getting a Trump Award.

Yale historian, Greg Grandin calls out the deal behind the spiel. “The Committee didn’t give the prize to Trump—they gave it to the next best thing.” Grandin calls it the “enshittification of the Nobel Peace Prize,” arguing Machado represents “the most intransigent face” of opposition aligned with “the darkest face of U.S. imperialism”

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Post-Truth Philanthropy

In an age when “peace” has been privatised, the Nobel Committee functions less like an arbiter of moral worth and more like a moral venture-capital firm. The product is virtue, the currency is perception, and the ROI is geopolitical alignment. The brand promise? Hope. Backed by airstrikes and Hell-fire missiles.

But what a brand it’s become. Each laurel leaf doubles as plausible deniability for the West’s latest proxy gambit. Each medal a moral tax write-off.

The same Washington that bankrolls coups across Latin America now gets to outsource its guilt to Oslo. The Committee, meanwhile, smiles beatifically as if some ideological Switzerland floating above the ruins. Or disappears, like The Cheshire Cat leaving nothing but the smile of Nobel’s good intentions.

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When Symbols Kill

Let’s be clear: Machado’s courage is real. Her life is in danger. But the award, like so many before it, risks worsening that danger. Maduro’s propaganda machine now gets to point and say: “See? Proof the opposition takes orders from Washington.” In Caracas, that’s not metaphor; it’s a death sentence.

This is the tragedy of symbolic politics: when the symbol matters more than the substance, it’s not just someone, somewhere, but millions everywhere who are always available to bleed for the optics. Just ask any elderly Cambodian.

Vorng Chhut, 76, had never heard the name Henry Kissinger when some of the US’s estimated 500,000 bombs started dropping down on his village in Svay Rieng province, near the Vietnamese border.

“Nothing was left, not even the bamboo trees. People escaped, while those who stayed in the village died,” he says. “A lot of people died, I can’t count all their names. The bodies were swollen and when it became quiet, people would come and bury the bodies.”

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The Feminist Façade

The Committee’s defenders cite gender parity; Machado is only the 20th woman laureate. But if feminism means the freedom to echo Thatcher while praising Bukele, we might as well rebrand neoliberal austerity as self-care. Machado also supported the 2002 coup against democratically elected Chávez, has vowed to privatize oil, supports U.S. sanctions, and her party has strategic ties with Israel’s Likud

Latin America’s women’s movements; the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Ni Una Menos, the feminist collectives that resisted both dictatorships and imperial meddling; earned their moral authority through collective struggle. Machado’s brand of “Iron Lady” individualism offers photo-ops, not transformation.

The Prize That Teaches Nothing

Alfred Nobel’s will asked that the prize honour those who promote “fraternity between nations.” What we have instead is virtue signaling between power blocs. The Peace Prize has become the world’s most prestigious participation ribbon; awarded by a Committee that believes irony died with Kierkegaard.

Meanwhile, seven million Venezuelans remain displaced, political prisoners rot, and the supposed heroine of democracy offers sound bites about privatization from an undisclosed location.

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Conclusion: Oslo Syndrome

Once upon a time, the Nobel Peace Prize was meant to prevent wars. Now, in a surreal and grotesque switch, it pre-emptively sanctifies the next one. In elevating Machado, the Committee has managed to reward resistance, endorse intervention, and flatter imperial ego; all in a single stroke.

If Kissinger’s medal was minted in moral absurdity, Machado’s is stamped in moral recursion: history repeating first as tragedy, then as press release. Or just another monster-baby, Trump nappy change.

So perhaps it’s time we rename it honestly. Not the Nobel Peace Prize, but the Nobel Piece Prize; awarded each year to whichever fragment of humanity best flatters Western narratives of virtue. The Nobel mirror on Oslo’s wall reflects not peace’s Cinderella, but her wicked stepsister; coiffed, perfumed, scripted and sponsored by the West.

Because in the post-truth century, even peace has a price tag; and Oslo keeps the receipts.

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When María Corina Machado learned she had won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, her immediate response was revealing. “I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela,” she announced, “and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!”

The irony is staggering: a woman receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for opposing authoritarianism openly admires, Trump, a leader who suspended constitutional rights, removed judges who ruled against him, and deployed security forces to intimidate the legislature with assault weapons.

This was no diplomatic courtesy. It was a statement of allegiance; one that encapsulates the fundamental contradiction at the heart of Machado’s politics and her Nobel recognition. Here is a woman celebrated for promoting democracy and peaceful transition, yet her political career has been defined by alignment with foreign powers, support for regime change operations, and endorsement of the very forces that have historically destabilised Latin American democracies.

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