According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the Nobel Prize should be awarded to the person who “during the preceding year shall have conferred the greatest benefit on humanity.” Note the word “precedent” : those of us who think Donald Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to ending (or at least suspending) the war in Gaza will have to wait until next year’s prizes are announced.
We shouldn't hold our breath.
Meanwhile, the Norwegian Nobel Committee chose well when it awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize on Friday to María Corina Machado, a 58-year-old Venezuelan opposition leader now in hiding from Nicolás Maduro's regime. In doing so, the committee also indicted that regime and its 26-year record of ruin, carried out in the name of"Bolivarian" socialism with the credulous support of many Western progressives.
Machado earned her Nobel Prize last year when, after being barred by the government from running in the presidential election, she endorsed Edmundo González, a nonpartisan candidate, helping to consolidate a divided opposition. González won the vote by more than two to one, according to independent polls, only to see Maduro ignore the result and install himself for another six-year term, jailing nearly 2,000 political dissidents.
Machado’s own career as a dissident began more than 20 years ago, after she co-founded an election-monitoring group out of fear that Maduro’s immediate predecessor, Hugo Chávez, was systematically undermining Venezuela’s democratic institutions. In 2005, the Chávez regime charged her with treason for supporting a recall referendum; in 2014, she was charged again with treason for participating in anti-regime protests. In 2024, she published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that began: “I write this from hiding, fearing for my life, my freedom, and the freedom of my fellow citizens from the dictatorship led by Nicolás Maduro.”
That record of foresight and courage stands in sharp and embarrassing contrast to the credulity of the regime's fellow travelers in the West. They include Naomi Klein, the Canadian writer, who in 2007 praised Chávez for turning Venezuela into a place where “citizens had renewed their faith in the power of democracy to improve their lives”; Chesa Boudin, the former San Francisco district attorney, who in 2009 applauded Chávez's “commitment to the democratic process” when the leader opened “the door to his possible lifelong rule”; and Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of Britain's Labour Party, who in 2013 hailed Chávez for “demonstrating that the poor matter” and making “enormous contributions to Venezuela and the very wider world.”
Since the catastrophe of Chavismo became evident—skyrocketing murder rates, widespread shortages and famine, millions fleeing the country on foot, leaders accused of enriching themselves through drug trafficking—these former allies have, for the most part, remained silent. Klein apparently let slip something about the regime's"petro-populism," but, to borrow a slogan familiar to her camp, when it comes to Venezuela, silence is violence. Choosing to ignore the catastrophe there only serves to perpetuate it.
What should be done?
In January, I noted in a column that everything tried so far has failed. Elections: stolen. Sanctions: ineffective. Arrest warrants and rewards: the same. Machado’s Nobel will draw attention to the regime’s repression. But, as other dissident laureates can attest, the effect is likely to be short-lived and slight. The 2021 peace prize, awarded to Dmitry Muratov, editor of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, did nothing to shock Vladimir Putin’s government; the 2023 prize, to Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, did nothing to free her from an Iranian prison.
The only option left is one that the Trump administration seems increasingly inclined to favor: regime change.
The best way to achieve this is to offer Maduro and his inner circle the equivalent of the Bashar al-Assad option: permanent exile in a friendly state, if not Russia, then probably Cuba. That could be accompanied by an offer of mass amnesty for the regime's low-ranking civilian and military officials, provided they swear allegiance to a democratic government under a legitimately elected leader.
This seems to be the real purpose of Trump’s armed diplomacy in the Caribbean: to induce enough fear that the bad guys flee. It’s also Machado’s view: Maduro and his cronies, he told the BBC last week, “will not leave unless they realize that there is a credible threat, that things are going to get worse for them every day.” But that, in turn, requires the Trump administration to be willing to continue the escalation, all the way to a full-scale military confrontation.
This would entail undeniable and deadly risks for both Venezuelans and Americans. It could also permanently put Trump's coveted Nobel Peace Prize out of reach.
On the other hand, there are more important peace prizes than the Nobel, a prize never won by Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, or other figures in world history who knew that the path to peace does not always lie solely through peace. If the sacrifice Trump must make to end the horror of the Maduro regime is to renounce that prize, he can take solace in the fact that Machado dedicated his award"to the long-suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support."
