Jonathan Frühling
The only good news: the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize is not going to Donald Trump. The bad news: it is going to the right-wing Venezuelan opposition politician María Corina Machado. The committee’s statement explains that she received the prize ‘for her struggle for a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.’ A statement that could hardly be more wrong.
Machado’s politics
Machado’s political career spans approximately 25 years. She first became known for her fight against left-wing President Hugo Chávez. Chávez came to power through elections in 1998 and became extremely popular thanks to his comprehensive social reforms. This prompted the right-wing opposition and the capitalist class behind it, as well as US imperialism, to attempt a coup in 2002. Machado was involved in this by signing the so-called Carmona Decree as vice-president of the organisation Súmate. Its content was to dissolve parliament, suspend the constitution and remove the supreme court judges and the government. Although she denies this today, this episode makes it clear that she has always stood on the side of the ruling class and never on the side of the people.
Even today, her policies and tactics are by no means characterised by a desire for a ‘just and peaceful transition to democracy’. Let us remember: in 2015, Obama already declared Venezuela an enemy nation and, from 2017 onwards, the US government under Trump imposed comprehensive sanctions that caused large parts of the country to collapse. GDP shrank by 65% between 2014 and 2020! Hyperinflation, fuel shortages, power cuts and mass misery were the result. Frozen foreign assets were used to finance coup attempts such as that by Juan Guaidó in 2019. Under Biden, the policy of ruining and starving Venezuela continued unchanged. Particularly perfidious are sanctions targeting the state food programme, which have led to a hunger crisis. As a result, nearly 8 million people fled the misery in Venezuela by 2023.
Machado has supported this policy from the outset and even advocates tightening the sanctions. She also echoes Trump’s lies that the Maduro government is part of a drug cartel and supports the extrajudicial executions by the US of crews of unidentifiable boats in the Caribbean. She even calls for imperialist powers to attack Venezuela itself and pushes for US piracy with the slogan ‘We’re asking for law enforcement’. Furthermore, she is also calling on Venezuela’s security apparatus to stage a coup. The fact that she actually attempted to participate in the 2024 presidential elections (where she was excluded from the election on flimsy grounds) must be seen in this context. She has either long since abandoned, or never pursued, a peaceful path to power. Her policy is therefore for US imperialism to put massive pressure on the peoples of Venezuela so that, out of misery and despair, they support the bourgeois, pro-US opposition, enabling it to take power.
In saying this, we do not wish to ignore the responsibility of the authoritarian and Bonapartist Maduro regime for the catastrophic situation in Venezuela. But the goal of the right-wing opposition and Machado is, first and foremost, to replace the corruption and enrichment of the Maduro regime’s favourites at the expense of the masses by restoring the privileges of the traditional elites – naturally also at the expense of the people. Instead of leaning on China and Russia, Venezuela is to become a semi-colony of the US again. Consequently, she dedicated her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump and his ‘support’ for Venezuela.
The question also arises as to what would become of Venezuela if Maduro’s dictatorship were to be removed by Machado. She made some interesting comments on this at the Council of the Americas on 6 June 2025. There, she promised to hand over the country to international investors who are interested in its oil reserves and minerals. Venezuela would then become the most important US ally in the region, and the 8 million refugees could return and help generate billions in profits for US corporations! This is more of a prize for ruthlessness than for peace.
The Nobel Peace Prize throughout history
It is not without reason that the Nobel Peace Prize is the most controversial of the Nobel Prizes. It is therefore not so far-fetched that Trump should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his shameful Middle East ‘peace plan’. And perhaps that would not have been such a bad thing, as it would have finally discredited the ‘award’. Back in 1973, Henry Kissinger received the prize for negotiating the US withdrawal from the Vietnam War. However, he was one of the leading strategists behind the escalation of the war and is primarily responsible for the up to 2 million deaths it caused. In recent years, too, some gruesome figures and organisations have made it onto the list of Nobel Peace Prize winners: In 1994, PLO leader Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Peres received the prize for the Oslo Accords. Peres was active in the Haganah from 1947 onwards, participated in the Nakba, helped build the Zionist armed forces and, as a leading politician of the Zionist state, was involved in the oppression of the Palestinian people. Other examples: Barack Obama, known for his bloody drone wars; in 2012, the European Union, which has established a deadly border regime; Colombian President Santos in 2016, whose peace treaty with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) was never implemented, and Abiy Ahmed (Ethiopian Prime Minister) in 2019, who waged a civil war in 2020 in which ethnic cleansing and massacres of civilians were the order of the day.
It is therefore clear that the Nobel Peace Prize itself was, in part, a political tool and (consciously or unconsciously) had, and continues to have, the aim of recognising achievements that serve Western imperialist interests. It is doubtful that the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize will go to the Sumud Peace Flotilla, which attempted to break the blockade of Gaza and thus denounce the Israeli genocide. After all, in 2024 it did not go to the masses of Bangladesh who overthrew the dictatorial government despite deadly repression. Of course, there are also individuals and organisations that have won the prize for their democratic and humanitarian commitment. Ultimately, however, these are merely decorative accessories. There are no revolutionaries on the long list. Instead of awarding Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks in 1918 for the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty, for example, the prize went a year later to the imperialist and racist Woodrow Wilson, who had led the United States into the First World War.
It should therefore be made clear that the selection is not objective or value-free, but is made by an institution deeply rooted in the bourgeois and imperialist system. In the case of the Nobel Peace Prize, peace means the peace of the ruling class. People and organisations that have rendered outstanding services in the struggle for justice and emancipation, against exploitation and oppression, have nothing to expect from the Nobel Prize Committee. For our peace is not the cemetery peace of the ruling class, but that of a future socialist society, which alone can make truly peaceful coexistence among humankind possible.