She Won the Nobel Peace Prize and Gave It to Trump

According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the Nobel Prizes are to be awarded to those who have made the greatest contribution to humanity in the previous year.
It’s an important detail — “the previous year.”
So for those who believe Donald Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in brokering (or at least halting) the Gaza War, they’ll have to wait until next year’s announcement.

But don’t hold your breath.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has already made what I consider an excellent choice for 2025: María Corina Machado, the 58-year-old Venezuelan opposition leader currently in hiding from Nicolás Maduro’s regime.
By honoring her, the Committee has done more than reward courage — it has indicted the destructive, hypocritical legacy of “Bolivarian socialism,” a system long romanticized by segments of the Western left for nearly three decades.

A Courage Worthy of Recognition

Machado earned this prize last year.
After being barred from running for president, she unified Venezuela’s fractured opposition behind independent candidate Edmundo González, who went on to win by more than a two-to-one margin — according to independent monitors.
Maduro simply ignored the results, extended his own term by six years, and imprisoned roughly 2,000 political opponents.

Machado’s activism goes back more than 20 years.
She co-founded a voter-monitoring organization after witnessing Hugo Chávez systematically dismantle Venezuela’s democratic institutions.
In 2005, Chávez’s government charged her with treason for supporting a recall referendum. In 2014, she was charged again for attending anti-government protests.

Last year, in a column for The Wall Street Journal, she wrote:

“I am writing this from hiding, fearing for my life and my freedom, and for the safety of my fellow Venezuelans under Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship.”

Her foresight and bravery stand in stark contrast to the Western intellectuals who once idolized the regime she resisted.

The Shame of Western Romanticism

Remember when Canadian author Naomi Klein called Chávez’s Venezuela a place where “citizens had regained faith in democracy’s power to improve lives”?
Or when former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin praised Chávez’s “commitment to democratic processes” in 2009 — right after he abolished term limits?
Or when former U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn claimed in 2013 that Chávez “showed the poor mattered, and made enormous contributions to Venezuela and the world”?

Then came the reality: exploding homicide rates, hunger, millions of refugees walking across borders, and a ruling class enriched by narcotrafficking.
Faced with the catastrophe, those same Western admirers mostly fell silent.
Klein made a brief reference to the regime’s “petro-populism,” but as her own side likes to say, “silence is violence.”
Ignoring the suffering of Venezuelans only entrenches the tragedy.

What Now?

As I wrote back in January, every other option has failed.
Elections were stolen.
Sanctions proved toothless.
Arrest warrants and bounties accomplished nothing.

Machado’s Nobel Prize will momentarily shine a spotlight on the regime’s brutality — but as history shows, that spotlight fades quickly.
When Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov won the Peace Prize in 2021, it didn’t weaken Vladimir Putin’s rule.
When Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi received it in 2023, it didn’t get her out of prison.

Ultimately, what’s left on the table is what Trump’s administration has increasingly hinted at: regime change.

The best path, paradoxically, may be to offer Maduro and his cronies exile — an “Assad-style” deal in which they can flee permanently to Russia or Cuba.
At the same time, Venezuela could offer amnesty to lower-ranking officials and military officers who pledge loyalty to a newly elected democratic government.

This, in essence, is the goal of Trump’s renewed “gunboat diplomacy” in the Caribbean:
to frighten the tyrants enough that they choose to run.

Machado herself said it best in a BBC interview last week:

“Maduro and his clique will not step down unless they truly feel threatened — unless they understand that the longer they wait, the worse it will get.”

If Trump’s government is serious, it must be willing to push the tension right up to the brink of open confrontation.

A Peace Prize Beyond Oslo

Of course, this path carries enormous risks — for Venezuelans and for Americans alike.
It could also ensure that Trump never receives the Nobel Peace Prize he so clearly craves.

But there are prizes greater than the Nobel.
Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry Truman never received one either — yet they understood that peace sometimes requires strength, not ceremony.

If ending Maduro’s terror means forfeiting Oslo’s medal, so be it.
Trump can still take solace in the fact that Machado has dedicated her Nobel Peace Prize “to the suffering people of Venezuela — and to President Trump, for his decisive support.”

Now is the time for action.