OPINIONOPINION, By giving the award to Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel Committee has effectively crowned Trump’s vision of power and intervention as ‘peace’. By Steve StrifflerSteve Striffler is the Director of the Labor Resource Center and Professor of Anthropology at UMass Boston.Published On 16 Oct 202516 Oct 2025Click here to share on social mediashare2ShareAlthough 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. Advertisement 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 administra …
