How Trump got the Nobel Peace Prize after all | Donald Trump

By awarding the prize to the Venezuelan María Corina Machado, the Nobel Committee effectively crowned the vision of power and Trump’s intervention as “peace”.

Although the White House immediately warned the Nobel Committee for putting “politics above peace” when it failed to hand over the peace prize to US President Donald Trump, the administration had to be satisfied that the award went to the Venezuelan. Maria Corina Machado. Trump and Machado are cut from the same right-wing authoritarian fabric, which partly explains why the president was quick to congratulate her and why Machado, in turn, dedicated his award to her.

As the leader of Venezuela’s far-right opposition, Machado has opted for a brand of peace that seeks to undermine Venezuelan democracy and sovereignty for more than a quarter of a century. In 2002, he helped orchestrate a coup against Hugo Chávez, the democratically elected president at the time. Undeterred by the failure, Machado subsequently worked to build an opposition whose primary goal was to create enough political and economic chaos to undermine the Venezuelan government and return the country to oligarchic rule. This included mobilizing violent mobs to block streets, attack opponents, wreak havoc on the country’s economy, and terrorize large segments of the population. More recently, Machado’s relentless pursuit of “peace” led her to call on none other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Gaza genocide 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 destabilizing force. His image has been carefully selected to appeal to the United States and Europe, where right-wing populists are increasingly claiming the mantle of democratic renewal. By awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize, the committee helped whitewash that image and reinforced the narrative that only the West defines what counts as legitimate democracy.

The worrying thing about Machado being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is not so much that the committee “got it wrong”, something that has done often enoughor even that general coverage of his award was largely uncritical. It is that, by awarding the prize to Machado, the Nobel Committee made an open invitation to Trump to continue, and even intensify, military intervention and gunboat diplomacy in Latin America. For Venezuela, this means violent regime change is firmly on the table.

In fact, Machado herself suggested that the attention the Nobel Peace Prize could lead to greater international intervention in Venezuela, a chilling sentiment. echoed by Bret Stephens in The New York Times. This should come as no surprise, given that Machado has encouraged Trump’s continued illegal efforts to “fight drug trafficking,” applauded 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 seems prescient. Just this Wednesday, The New York Times revealed that the Trump administration authorized covert CIA operations aimed at destabilizing the government of Venezuela. The disclosure confirms exactly what many feared: that rewarding Machado under the banner of “peace” would encourage Washington to seek regime change by other means. In effect, the Nobel Committee provided moral cover for the very interventions that its prize was intended 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 prestige whereby violence not only becomes peace but, in doing so, becomes an effective tool for advancing an authoritarianism that is reformulated as democracy. Opponents are then presented as enemies of freedom who must be eliminated, whose destruction enables a larger project that benefits the very rich while leaving workers in the lurch.

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 seem very similar in all the Americas. It is about ensuring 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 natural resources and public goods that support workers. Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Machado, someone who puts a democratic face on violent foreign intervention and the economic war against the poor, is not only bad for Venezuela. It is deeply disturbing for the rest of the hemisphere and for the world.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.