Nobel Committee as much a vassal of the US elite as NATO leadership: Analyst

By Syed Zafar Mehdi

Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition politician María Corina Machado, who has openly called for foreign military action against her own country, is a political gesture that runs counter to any patriotic impulse, says an analyst.

In an interview with the Press TV website, Vijay Prashad, Chile-based Indian-American author, historian, and Executive Director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, noted that Machado should “never have been taken seriously by any such prize.”

Prashad said the decision shows that the Nobel Committee, tasked with annually selecting Peace Prize laureates, is “as much a vassal of the US elite as NATO leadership.”

Machado, a 58-year-old conservative political figure long favored by Washington’s “regime-change” lobby, won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for what the Committee described as her “tireless work promoting democratic rights.”

She has openly endorsed and supported the Trump administration's recent military attacks in the Caribbean, advocating for the overthrow of the Nicolas Maduro government in Caracas. 

“This is about saving lives,” she told Fox News in an interview last month, following US strikes on boats in the Caribbean. “Not only Venezuelan lives, but also the lives of American people, because as you have said, and we have heard, Maduro is the head of a narco-terrorist structure of cooperation.”

Prashad, who has worked extensively on South American affairs, said the Nobel Prize was set up with money from a man “who made weapons and gave prizes to Western figures who were not necessarily committed to bringing the widest idea of peace to the world.”

“One of the most important moments in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize was its rejection by the Vietnamese diplomat Le Duc Tho, who won it in 1973 with Henry Kissinger. He said that he rejected it because peace had not yet been established, but I believe that he did not want to accept it alongside Kissinger, a known war criminal,” he told the Press TV website.

Over the years, the award has been given to many controversial figures like Barack Obama, whose legacy is deeply entangled with drone warfare that wreaked havoc in many countries.

Menachem Begin, the former leader of the Zionist militia Irgun responsible for massacres of Palestinians, including Deir Yassin, won the award in 1978, while Shimon Peres, who developed Israel’s first nuclear bomb and expanded illegal settlements, received the award in 1994.

This year, Trump had aggressively lobbied for the award, though his bid was eventually rejected. Prashad said Trump, in fact, should have been given the award.

“Why not give it to the war mongers, as they have always done so. It would have shown independence if the Nobel Committee had given the prize to the Palestinian doctors and nurses and journalists and emergency workers, etc,” he asserted. “But no. We need to have our own Peace Prize.”

Machado’s case is particularly notable, since she voiced open and strong support for the Israeli-American genocidal war on Gaza, which claimed nearly 68,000 lives over the past two years.

After the award was announced, netizens shared her 2018 letter written to Netanyahu, in which she explicitly appealed for Israel’s help in overthrowing Venezuela’s elected government.

“The ceasefire (in Gaza) had been brokered to begin on October 10. On that same day, the Nobel Committee announced the award to a woman who supported the genocide and backed the génocidaire Netanyahu,” Prashad said.

“There is something quite sick about the coincidence of dates.”  

Importantly, the award was announced at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and Venezuela as US President Donald Trump threatened direct military action against the South American country on the basis of unsubstantiated claims of drug cartels.

On the possibility of the US taking direct military action against Venezuela, Prashad said the US is a “paper tiger” that will “roar but will not act in any substantial way.”

“It can bomb cities, as it did Tehran, but it no longer can invade countries without great cost to itself. The Venezuelan army is motivated and ready to resist,” he told the Press TV website.

“I doubt that underpaid US troops with no motivation will perform well on the ground if it comes to that. Aerial bombardment, yes, possible. But a ground invasion, impossible after the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan. We already saw the failure to act on the ground in Libya. The US just does not have the stomach for it.”

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk