*Originally published in 2025 and preserved as part of our archive project.Get E-International Relations delivered directly to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work.

I am anxious for the people of Venezuela because one of their political icons, María Corina Machado, got the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. My disquiet is not around her admirable struggle for democracy and justice, but from apprehension that the plaudit will trigger further strife – which occurs wherever the Nobel Peace Committee decides to give democracy and human rights a fillip. For example, Martin Luther King’s 1964 Nobel Prize was followed by his assassination and years of racial confrontation. The Irish rights activist, Sean MacBride, got his Nobel in 1974 with the worst of the Northern Ireland Troubles yet to come. Nuclear scientist turned rights campaigner Andrei Sakharaov earned the Nobel in 1975 along with Soviet designation as “Domestic Enemy Number One” and a decade of KGB clampdowns on civil society.

Other examples of peace awards that opened new chapters of domestic violence or repression include the Dalai Lama (1989), Iran’s Shirin Ebadi (2003) and Narges Mohammedi (2023), China’s Liu Xiaobo (2010), Russia’s Dmitry Muratov (2021), and the 2022 Prize-sharing between Belarus’s Ales Bialiatski and Russia’s Memorial. The 2015 award to Tunisia’s National Dialogue Quartet and 2026 recognition of Maria Ressa (Philippines) previewed continued instability. The Peace Prizes for Argentina’s Adolfo Perz Esquivel (1980), Poland’s Lech Walesa (1983), and South Africa’s Desmond Tutu (1984) were better timed as the peace transitions there were irreversibly underway by then. That indicates the importance of judging the optimal moment to award: get it right and turn a nation on the right path or, conversely, add fuel to the fire. These difficult political judgements are not the Nobel Committee’s forte. And its beloved democracy-human rights-peace equation is increasingly challenged by prevailing geopolitics. That raises a dilemma: how ethical is it, from the safety of Oslo, to risk others by provoking the conflict that is inevitably triggered by an award?

Thus, as Venezuela finds itself under the Nobel spotlight, its struggling people should brace for furious reaction from the country’s authoritarian leadership at the........

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