SHAKING UP THE RULES-BASED INTERNATIONAL ORDER?

This year's Nobel Peace Prize goes to Maria Corina Machado "for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy."

Code Pink organizer for Latin America Michelle Ellner doesn't like it.

When I saw the headline “Maria Corina Machado Wins the Nobel Peace Prize,” I almost laughed at the absurdity. But I didn’t, because there’s nothing funny about rewarding someone whose politics have brought so much suffering. Anyone who knows what she stands for knows there’s nothing remotely peaceful about her politics.

If this is what counts as “peace” in 2025, then the prize itself has lost every ounce of credibility. I’m Venezuelan-American, and I know exactly what Machado represents. She’s the smiling face of Washington’s regime-change machine, the polished spokesperson for sanctions, privatization, and foreign intervention dressed up as democracy.

The lady is on a roll, keep reading her essay to see that she's not laughing, she's cursing the Establishment. "Real peace is built by women organizing food networks during blockades, by Indigenous communities defending rivers from extraction, by workers who refuse to be starved into obedience, by Venezuelan mothers mobilizing to demand the return of children seized under U.S. ICE and migration policies and by nations that choose sovereignty over servitude."

She's right, life in the Global South sucks for many people, but advocating for more communism isn't going to help them.

Power Line's Scott Johnson likes the choice, although he pronounces anathema on the committee's process-worship, if for different reasons.

Jay Nordlinger tells the unedifying story of the prize in Peace, They Say: A History of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Most Famous and Controversial Prize in the World (2012). Someone ought to slip President Trump a copy. It might make him feel better about being overlooked by the committee. It might suggest to him that it is for the best.

In its story on this year’s recognition of Maria Corina Machado, Reuters invokes what “experts” have had to say (link in original): “Ahead of the announcement, experts on the award had said Trump would not win it as he is dismantling the international world order the Nobel committee cherishes.”

That might be a long-overdue dismantling.  "The values regime that brings an end to the saecular crisis is a values regime that emerged to bring an end to the saecular crisis.  If ending the saecular crisis means winning a war, there's going to be a lot of structure well suited to winning the war, but not necessarily well-suited to other challenges."  So that has proven to be with the United Nations and the so-called non-governmental organizations that batten off it.  "Pajamas Media's Robert Spencer notes that peace-process-rules-based-international-institutions produce a lot of process and precious little peace."

Reason's César Báez welcomes the prize, noting an implicit rebuke of Business as Usual in the global south.  "Machado's Nobel Prize marks a rare international acknowledgment of classical liberalism in a region long dominated by populism and state control. Her victory highlights the persistence of an idea once thought extinguished in Venezuela: that freedom and individual rights can outlast even the most entrenched regimes."

And Our President?  Outside the Beltway's James Joyner offers the proverbial back-handed compliment.

As bizarre and amusing as actively campaigning for a Nobel Peace Prize may be, it seems pretty clear that Trump was indeed the key driver here. He’s certainly more deserving of it than some past recipients, including Yasir Arafat, Henry Kissinger, and Barack Obama.

I can’t imagine, however, that he’ll be announced as the winner Friday. Not only is everyone in fact not liking him right now, but the fact that he’s actively campaigning for the medal works against him. And, even if Trump were wildly popular with the sort of folks who make the decision, it would be foolhardy to award it at this tentative stage of the process. The committee has been burned many times by premature declarations of peace. If the hostages are returned and Gaza is being rebuilt a year from now, though, I for one wouldn’t begrudge him the prize.

The likes of Michelle Ellner will no doubt be doing everything they can to keep the intifada going.