Keep your eyes on the prize

How the Nobel Peace prize can help us understand the western political game

Among all of the Nobel Prizes, the Peace prize is both the most distinguished of the awards and the most politicized. Whereas the physics, chemistry, medicine and other Nobel prizes are chosen by expert committees from Swedish Institutions of each respective field, the Peace prize committee members are simply appointed by Norway’s parliament. Knowing this, it’s important to take their awards with a grain of salt — their decisions may be more ulterior than they appear at face value. Unbeholden to rigid institutional standards, they have the power to define what peace itself means to the world. So, it is our responsibility as onlookers to assess the merit of nominees independently, rather than simply accepting what it is that they feed to us.

As the Peace prize’s bounds have changed over the years, it has reached a point where the prize is unabashedly being used to promote and further the ethos of western ideals and narratives on the international stage. Although many of the awardees demonstrate this, 2014 winner Malala Yousafzai and 2025 winner Maria Corino Machado particularly exemplify this phenomenon.

Yousafzai has a pretty split reputation: she is admired by many in the West for her display of bravery in standing up for women’s rights and education in Pakistan, yet she is unpopular among the general populace of her own country and across the Muslim community. In her autobiography “I am Malala,” she didn’t limit her disdain to just the Taliban and corrupt political officials, but extended it to Pakistan’s culture and religion itself. She painted leaders as backwards when they followed Islamic tradition and as enlightened when they brought more western culture, like Valentine’s Day celebrations and pop concerts, to Pakistan.

Once Yousafzai secured a global platform — endorsed by the West and made credible by her esteemed prize — she was “used to reinforce narratives that justify United States interventionism under the guise of promoting democracy and women’s rights,” as positioned by Mooman Muhammad in an opinion article for S2J News. By speaking from the position of a Pakistani, Muslim girl, she was able to exacerbate Islamaphobic, racist perceptions of her country and religion better than western propaganda could have accomplished on its own. She has also remained noticeably silent or passive on issues such as the genocide in Gaza or the violent crackdown on Pakistani protesters by a U.S.-backed military regime, further showcasing her compliance with western interests.

Machado, Former Deputy of the National Assembly of Venezuela and leader of the opposition to the country’s current administration, won the Peace Prize for her “tireless work in promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,” according to an official statement from the Nobel Committee.

This is again a reflection of the public image western powers are attempting to promote on the international stage. The committee awarding the Peace Prize to a U.S.-backed Venezuelan leader helped chariot the narrative that America had virtuous intentions of bringing freedom and peace to Venezuela when they abducted Nicolás Maduro in January. American moves to leech Venezuela’s conveniently abundant oil supply implies that this narrative may be more than a little misleading. Securing an additional major oil source in Venezuela by uprooting the current administration and installing a puppet leader was a strategic move that allowed the U.S. to pursue war with Iran without risking total loss of access to petrol. This situation is a prime example of how the Peace Prize is corroborating western propaganda and, by consequence, sanctioning American imperialism.

In both the cases of Yousafzai and Machado, the laureates' victories are quite indicative of how the Peace Prize is utilized politically. Credibility and a positive public image are lended specifically to activists who endorse western interests over other prominent advocates at the discretion of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Because of this, not only should the Peace Prize not be taken too seriously as a standard for identifying the most moral pacifists of the year, but it should also be analyzed to better understand the western agenda.

For example, the prize’s frequent accreditation of certain humanitarian aid organizations may explain one way the public developed such a positive image of these groups when they are often actively undermining the development of the countries they’re aiding.

Another interesting awardee is George Catlett Marshall, former U.S. secretary of state and five-star army general, who is known for his advocacy and supervision of the initiative for the economic recovery of Europe after World War II, known as the Marshall Plan. The ambitious plans to rebuild Europe actually belonged to the State Department, and Marshall was merely the spokesperson the plan was strategically accredited to because of his prestige as a popular general. Although Marshall himself likely bought into the more sugarcoated goals of the aid program, awarding him the Peace Prize helped spread a gilded perception of the plan. In reality, it was used as a strategic political tool by then-President Harry S. Truman in the Cold War to counter Soviet influence, prevent communism and broaden American hegemony.

Although many different factors contribute to the international public perception of certain people and organizations, the Nobel Peace Prize is a prestigious enough award that it could be used to attempt to sway or affirm public opinion. The fact that it’s being so blatantly to substantiate western propaganda is enough to warrant the need for us to stop heralding the Nobel Peace Award as a credible and unbiased institution. We, as a society, should utilize the calculative character of the prize by analyzing future winners to better understand the global political game. By keeping our eyes on the prize, we can better see through the deception of gilded western narratives.

Written by: Saniya Syed— sansyed@ucdavis.edu

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