Much Ado About Nothing: Another Nobel Prize For War

By Biljana Vankovska

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Mon. Oct. 20, 2025: The flood of angry —and justified— reactions to this year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, María Corina Machado, reveals less about the Nobel Prize committee’s decision than about the public’s sense of shock. How can anyone still be astonished when a figure who embodies everything but peace receives this award? History shows that the Nobel Peace Prize has often gone to war criminals, opportunists, and politically “convenient” figures—honored not for moral courage, but for alignment with Western geopolitical logic. Rarely has a laureate inspired unqualified applause.

Maria Corina Machado, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

From recent memory, I can recall only one genuinely deserving laureate: the Japanese hibakusha —the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki— who devoted their lives to nuclear disarmament. Yet even that recognition came far too late, a symbolic gesture to a generation vanishing from this world, at a time when the threat of nuclear war has once again become palpable, thanks to the proxy war in Ukraine. Another person who deserves full respect is Lê Đức Thọ, because he refused to accept the award. In many cases, those overlooked by the Nobel Prize—the so-called “Club of Non-Winners”—have advanced humanity far more than the laureates, yet their contributions remain underappreciated; the prize, however, has in no way diminished their role in shaping human civilization.

The decisions of the Nobel Committee have been scrutinized and criticized vastly; doing so on a case-by-case basis would mean soiling one’s hands with the blood that stains the biographies of many laureates. For instance, in 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Fritz Haber, the ‘father of chemical weapons’ in WWI, who defended the use of gas warfare during his lifetime. Should we mention Milton Friedman or Henry Kissinger? But the post–Cold War period has ushered in a new practice, deeply infused with Fukuyama’s “end of history” spirit: the prize increasingly goes to individuals with no real connection to peace. Instead, it celebrates dissidents from non-Western systems (conveniently labeled as “authoritarian”), journalists, feminists, opposition movements seeking regime change, separatists (such as the Dalai Lama), or even religious zealots enamored with the glory of death like Mother Teresa.

Take, for instance, Malala Yousafzai —the youngest ever laureate— whose personal tragedy at the hands of the Taliban became a convenient moral justification for an illegal U.S. intervention in Afghanistan. Years later, as a mature woman in London, Malala has openly admitted her struggle to find meaning after being turned into an icon and stripped of her youth and identity for geopolitical ends.

The European Union was awarded for “past achievements” —for integrating a war-torn continent— yet its role in fueling Yugoslavia’s bloody collapse is often forgotten. Today, it grows ever more militarized and tacitly condones the atrocities in Gaza. Barack Obama himself admitted he didn’t fully understand why he had been honored, perhaps for being the first African American in the White House. Soon after, however, he left nations in ruins, Libya among them, still bearing the scars of his deeds.

The point is simple: a politically chosen and opaque committee, masquerading as an independent body, has usurped Alfred Nobel’s will. They have “modernized” it to fit the neoliberal world order—one that pretends brotherhood among nations prevails, that demilitarization is advancing, and that conflicts are resolved peacefully. Nobel’s own criteria were modest but clear: the Peace Prize was to be given to those who “have done the most or best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” The best analysis ever written on the mismanagement of Nobel’s prize and abuse of the entrusted funds is transparently and eloquently elaborated by Frederik S. Heffermehl.

The Committee, crucially, also has the right not to award the prize in a given year. And perhaps this is one such year. The world has returned to a pre–League of Nations mentality, when waging war was seen as a sovereign right. Militarization has reached grotesque proportions, and wars are now fought with drones, cyberattacks, and proxy armies. This is a dark age —an age of genocide. There are no peace congresses, unless one counts the humiliating gatherings of loyal vassals like the one in Sharm el-Sheikh, where leaders fawned over Trump as he collected medals and promises from wealthy states eager to build resorts upon the bodies of Palestinian children.

Some have proposed alternative nominees —Francesca Albanese, Greta Thunberg, or the Palestinian journalists, medics, and civilians who endure what can only be called a new Holocaust. Yet the Nobel Peace Prize was never intended as consolation for victims; it exists to honor those who actively prevent war and suffering. To award it under such compromised circumstances to anyone of true moral stature would insult their courage and integrity —it is a prize unworthy of their principles. By the way, Francesca was awarded an alternative peace award that suits her well.

After all these years, the conclusion grows clearer: the Nobel Peace Prize is one of the greatest farces of our time. Its prestige endures only because of humanity’s desperate longing for peace —a longing that blinds us to the fact that peace is not a one-day celebration, but a continuous struggle. In a world just 90 seconds from midnight on the Doomsday Clock, the Peace Prize is the least important thing to waste our time and outrage on.

Behind its golden aura lies about one million euros —money said to come from the “interest” on Nobel’s fortune. But the truth is that this fortune, like all capital, reproduces itself through global capitalism —the same system that fuels war, inequality, and poverty. We are, in fact, trapped in a self-sustaining mechanism designed to preserve the world’s status quo.

So why are we surprised or angry that this person or that person received the prize? If the Nobel Committee itself is an old boys’ club of diplomats, politicians, and obedient intellectuals, why should we trust their judgment in any field—be it literature or science—where the laureates almost always come from the West or are ideologically acceptable to it?

Forget the Nobel! The world needs no more millionaires made in the name of peace. What we need is peace itself —real, painful, human peace. We have children buried under rubble, starving mothers, maimed generations, and the stench of death in our lungs. This is not the time for champagne or fake tears and pathetic words.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was produced by Globetrotter. Biljana Vankovska is a professor of political science and international relations at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, a member of the Transnational Foundation of Peace and Future Research (TFF) in Lund, Sweden, and the most influential public intellectual in Macedonia. She is a member of the No Cold War collective.