by Laurence Peterson
The Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded a few days ago. The prizes for peace, economics and sometimes literature have become so discredited in my lifetime–to the point of inspiring anti-Nobel prizes–that my response to their bestowal every year has usually consisted of a bemused scoffing, rather like when one continues to watch a movie to see how bad it can get. But my reaction to this year’s award was more like what I think I would feel if I witnessed someone run off the road right in front of me; there was a not insubstantial personal sense of violation attached to it, even though it didn’t directly affect me, of course. In terms of the recipient, as well as the circumstances surrounding the affair, I was so struck by an idea of the rottenness of traditional international institutions collapsing under the accelerating moral and intellectual decay of Trump and his aligned political movements that I decided I could justifiably waste one of my humble columns on it.
Most people are aware that Donald Trump has been, for an interminable amount of time, asserting that he deserves the peace prize for a number of things, especially the 7 or 8 wars he claims to have “solved”, including conflicts between states that do not, and never have existed, and involving countries even on different sides of the world that never had, in any case, much to do with each other. The pertinent fact here is that Trump was inaugurated a mere eleven days after nominations for the 2025 prize were closed, so his nomination was always going to be an exceptionally long shot, much as Trump’s jealousy of the pre-inauguration award to President Obama might inspire endless preposterous protestations. But they have made an award to him increasingly likely in 2026 (especially with the mid-term elections taking place a mere weeks after the Peace prize announcement in early-October). Norway is reported to be preparing to respond to tariffs and other measures Trump might impose in response to the Norwegian-based Nobel Peace Committee’s (a non-governmental organization, mind) giving the prize to someone other than himself, which testifies to the potential room for meddling, intrusion and influence-peddling in the seemingly independent deliberations of important and influential organizations operating in a traditional international system that happens to be crumbling. The fact that Norway is now an increasingly important member of NATO, whose ex-president and current finance minister, Jens Stoltenberg, led the organization, serves to increase this likelihood. Stoltenberg has had an extremely complex and sensitive relation, to put it mildly, with Trump, whose views on NATO (and I do not say this as a fan of NATO, or of Stoltenberg’s), as in so many other things, range from erratic to incomprehensible.
But all this is only a small part of the story. The prize was ultimately bestowed upon Maria Corina Machado of Venezuela for keeping, in the words of the Nobel Committee, “the flame of democracy burning” in that country. Machado has been an opposition leader in Venezuela for a very long time, and when I say opposition leader, I am speaking of someone whose notion of opposition extends to active participation in and support for US-supported coups, that go back to the days of the government of Hugo Chavez from 1999 on, and continues under President Nicholas Maduro, including one as recently in 2018, under Trump himself.
Venezuela does not, and never has, posed the slightest threat to the United States, but the United States, as many know, has very recently blown up at least 4 or 5 (one may have been Colombian) boats containing Venezuelan nationals, none of whom has been convicted or even accused of any crime in the US or anywhere else, and actually sent warships (including one nuclear submarine) to patrol off the Venezuelan coast. It is asserted that this is a response to drugs smuggling by Venezuelan gangs, but Venezuela accounts for a quite small percentage of drugs smuggled into the US. Venezuela does, however, possess one of world’s largest oil reserves, which Maduro has, according to a New York Times article published on October the 10th, offered access to, in an extraordinary gesture if true, and in addition to other natural resources, in exchange for avoiding conflict with the US. But US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has long promoted conflict with Venezuela, and it seems, in the everlasting competition for access to Trump’s inimitably gullible but rapacious ear, he may be close to securing his target on this issue.
Venezuela has been, since the days of Chavez, but increasingly so, the target of one of the most stringent sanctions regimes imposed by the US, on the level of that imposed on Iran, but involving many, many other third countries, in the world. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Venezuela’s gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by more than 80% from 2013 to 2020. The New York Times says that is the worst decline for a nation not at war in decades. In a way, the situation of the Venezuelan people can certainly be compared to that of the Palestinians under a brutal Israeli occupation before 7th October (at least for now…). This kind of absurdly intense pressure on a well-endowed, but certainly not wealthy nation has actually vastly increased the very migration into the US that Trump has presumably sent armed goons into American cities to discourage.
Given all this, it is suspicious, to say the least, that the Nobel Committee would designate Machado as deserving of the prize. If, as seems increasingly likely, there is a serious effort made at regime change in Venezuela in the next few weeks, or even an actual military assault or land encroachment, Machado will almost certainly be given a major advantage in asserting a claim to leadership of the country, or, at the very least, will exert a unique influence on the political landscape of Venezuela. And that will, clearly, be bolstered by her status as a Nobel laureate, which “observers” in the US and elsewhere will, in turn, refer to in supporting her efforts, both in terms of propaganda and publicity, and, probably, with hard cash and other assets. The prize will effectively be putting an outsized thumb on the scale that corresponds to Venezuelan politics. And the vulnerability of neighboring states Trump may take a dislike to cannot be ignored, and this includes endangering Mexico. That the Nobel Committee would make the award with all the unusual goings-on in Venezuela, especially as there are so many other entities to celebrate, like the other-worldly heroism of medics in Gaza, is unintelligible unless one takes into account one thing: Trump.
Trump probably thinks that the deciding factor that should have resulted (in spite of the 11-day window of effectiveness mentioned earlier, if not other strictures) in a prize for him is the Gaza “peace” deal. In fact, the deal contains several loose ends that have vigorously eluded settlement. But the genocide that preceded the deal, incomplete as the deal remains, must not be forgotten. Trump supported and even intensified the genocide, even from the grotesque levels of lethal force he inherited from the criminal Biden regime. It seems very likely he, like Biden, as some of their predecessors did, could have stopped it with a phone call. To even contemplate the awarding of a peace prize to a monster like this simply must offend common decency and common sense. It is a kind of insult to the people of the world to impose such an absurdity on them, and implicitly ask them to take it at all seriously.
How, then, if the Committee made the award to Machado, and not Trump, does Trump factor into its decision? I believe the Committee did not, for various reasons, some simply administrative or institutional, want to make the award to Trump, but feared, rightly or wrongly, some kind of retribution which might have brutally tangible effects on potentially large numbers of people (the proposed 100% sanctions on China, perhaps?). In this sense, one can only sympathize, to a certain extent, with the poor Committee members forced into the dilemma of degrading a time-honored prize or being responsible for the potentially deadly retaliation of a sociopathic lunatic and his empowering toadies like Rubio. So they chose to reward someone who will do Trump’s bidding if put in power with the aid of the prize. And, as on cue, Machado immediately dedicated her prize to Trump. She gave him the booby prize, a prize which, had it been awarded to Trump, would have served to paper over a genocide; now it is poised to propagandize a regime-change or even invasion of a sovereign state, without US Congressional approval, almost certainly (unless there is a so-called false-flag intervention) in violation of international and US law. That an institution presumably dedicated to peace and upholding of anything approximating “international law” as we know (or knew) it, could be forced into a box limiting its room for effective action to such a preposterous extent speaks volumes about the rot that degrades international–and largely Western dominated–entities reduced to vassals of a failed state/empire.
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