I find it odd that, during a time of an active genocide and an impending world war between The Western world and other nuclear powers, the Nobel Committee has decided to give this year’s peace prize to Maria Corina Machado. In fact, I find it more than odd, it is a joke. A sick joke.
According to Afred Nobel, who established the Nobel awards, the Peace Prize should go to one “who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses.” Let us then judge how Maria Corina Machado best embodies these standards, as compared to people who have been working to bring peace to active war zones and end genocide. People like Greta Thunberg, Francesca Albanese, or perhaps one of the hundreds of Palestinian journalists who have been killed reporting on the destruction of Gaza. Their bona fides are self-evident and need not be explained. I’m sure there are many equally or even more worthy candidates of which I am not aware, but let’s start with these people. They have risked (or given their lives) to the ending of wars, and dared to stand up against the principal powers in this world who have a self-professed goal of global domination.
According to the Nobel Committee itself, Machado was given the award due to “her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela”. Even if we take this claim by the Committee at face value, how does this qualify her for a peace prize? A democracy prize, perhaps, if such a thing existed, but not a peace prize. Nonetheless, this is what they lead with.
Every sentence of their explanation for Machado winning the prize is worthy of both comment and contempt, but let me just highlight a few. They proceed to laud her commitment to democracy without bothering to say how this relates to the qualifications for a peace prize as elucidated by Mr. Nobel. Instead, they call her a unifying voice. Which would be an indicator of her work towards peace, but the full quote from the announcement calls her “a unifying force for the opposition”. Which is to say, a main belligerent in the battle for control of the Venezuelan government, one in which the opposition party is not averse to using violence, as could be seen in the coup which she supported and in the street violence which occurred during the protests she encouraged. It can perhaps best be seen in Machado’s choice of allies, Donald Trump and the United States (which is actively blowing up Venezuelan vessels in international waters) and Israel (which is antithetical to everything the Nobel Peace prize ought to represent, killing people in Gaza, The West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen, Qatar, Iran, and Syria).
The committee’s justification as to why Machado more than anybody on the planet deserves a peace prize continues with the repetition of the word “democracy”, as though that word is anything more than a propaganda talking point in this day and age. If the word does not mean a government expressing the will of the people, then of what value is it to the average citizen? Like a vampire, the western world has sucked from the word “democracy” any vestige of meaning or vitality. Who now talks of the right of Palestinian people for self-determination?
The rest of the apologia is an attack on the Venezuelan government that could have been hurriedly written by a tenth-grader the night before the essay was due. It stands as an embarrassment not only to the peace prize committee but to the Nobel Foundation at large and Western civilization as a whole. It is the death knell of reason and any appearance of integrity amongst western institutions.
Yes, the Nobel Peace Prize committee managed to avoid giving the prize to Donald Trump, but there was no bigger winner in their decision than him, save perhaps oil company executives. In fact, Machado dedicated her Peace Prize to Donald Trump (and presumably to the war in which he is about to engage in with Venezuela). It was actually quite a clever move on their part, because it allowed Trump and the faction of the ruling elite he represents to have a kumbaya moment with the liberals. You see, just as conservatives need a strong man authoritarian to bow down to, liberals still require institutions of authority to whom they can relinquish their reasoning abilities and personal autonomy. If the Nobel Foundation says someone is worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize, their decision must have great gravitas. The system has spoken. Many people express the idea that even a broken watch is right twice a day, and for liberals, Trump is always right on issues of imperialism.
Siege has always been a vital part of war, the deadlier part, especially for women, children and the elderly. In the modern era, The United States has used sanctions as a form of siege warfare, preventing fuel, food and medicines from entering countries such as Iraq, Iran, Syria and Venezuela, killing millions. Machado has urged The United States to maintain its deadly and destructive sanctions against Venezuela. Against her own people.
For those of us with no vested interest in either of our political parties nor the neoliberal ideology they both represent, the Nobel Peace Prize has irredeemably become a laughingstock. Knowing how wrong they can be and how blind to infinitely more important issues of war and peace they are leads one to question the prizes they are handing out in the fields of literature, in economics, and even the hard sciences.
Like every other institution in the western world, The Nobel Peace Prize has managed to ignore the greatest problems in the world in order to focus on self-serving minutiae. That the very real and very pressing issues of genocide and war between nuclear powers do not factor into the Peace Prize Committee’s decision-making is beyond the pale. It is time for a new peace prize to be established, one that is not beholden to western interests. One that actually focuses on the central issue of peace rather than putting peace in a supporting role to issues of lesser import. A peace prize that more accurately reflects the Alfred Nobel’s intentions. Beyond that, a peace prize that helps to usher in enduring peace rather than propping up the very imperialism that makes war inevitable and opposition necessary.
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