As might have been expected, the decision by the Nobel Committee in Oslo to grant this year's Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has raised a storm of controversy about an annual ritual that has been losing luster for years.
Critics say the committee chose Machado, a staunch Trumpist, because it didn't want to anoint her idol. At the same time, choosing another "globalist left-winger" would have given some credibility to the charge that most Nobel prizes have become political trophies.
One example: French President Emmanuel Macron's economic advisor was named a winner in economics.
Even in science categories, prizes are distributed in a way to reflect geopolitics. In literature, the winner, at least for the past 30 years, has been a writer or poet with left-wing credentials and few readers outside the European champagne and caviar liberal elites.
While that criticism may or may not be worth consideration, I think that the attacks launched on Machado, precisely from the same elites, are unfair.
To be sure, Machado hasn't done anything for peace in the way understood so far.
As the architect of several shaky ceasefires between Israel and Hamas, between India and Pakistan, between Congo-Kinshasa and Rwanda, and between Iran and Israel, US President Donald Trump would have made a more credible peace prize laureate.
One way out of the impasse created by ideology may be to rename the prize as the Nobel Prize for Campaigner of the Year for Political Freedom and Human Rights. I know, such a long phrase may trigger even more controversy about what is meant by freedom and human rights.
In the case of Machado, however, a case could be made to support her brave campaign to force an authoritarian regime to respect its own constitution by allowing free and fair elections according to the law of the land.
Machado isn't calling for revolution or the violent overthrow of President Nicolás Maduro's "Bolivarian" regime. All she is asking for is elections in the presence of international observers and a commitment by all contesting parties to accept the outcome.
I first visited Venezuela in 1972, at a time when it was ruled by an ersatz aristocratic elite that claimed imperial Spanish ancestry and regarded the "native" population as extras in a Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza.
So, when Hugo Chávez appeared on the scene to give a voice to those "extras," I was among many who welcomed the change.
It was after one of his earlier trips to Iran that I first met the flamboyant Chávez. With a few colleagues, we had invited him to dinner at an Italian restaurant in Paris, and the conversation that ensued touched on a range of topics.
However, two themes dominated.
The first was his "determination" to end poverty in Venezuela.
"There is no need for anyone to be poor in a country as rich as ours," he asserted. "Give me four years, just give me four years!"
The second theme was Chávez's claim that the Catholic Church, prompted by "wealthy oligarchs," was trying to sabotage his social revolution.
Well, Chávez had three times as many years and left Venezuela as poor, if not poorer, and certainly more divided than ever under Maduro, whom he called "my bus driver."
Under Chávez and Maduro, Venezuela, which has the world's largest oil reserves, earned more than $1.5 trillion from oil exports. And yet it fell into a maze of budget deficit, public borrowing and hyperinflation combined with corruption that seems to have become a way of life rather than an anomaly.
What happened? What did Chávez and Maduro do with the unprecedented wealth that came to Venezuela under their stewardship?
Part of the answer may lie in the fact that Venezuela has headed the list of Latin American nations as far as capital flight is concerned. Over the years, something like $170 billion has been transferred by Venezuelans to foreign, mostly American, banks. The "Bolivarians" also spent billions helping Cuba and distributing free or cut-price oil to several countries, including some areas of the United States.
Venezuela ended up with a shortage of gasoline, seeking emergency imports from far-away Iran.
Somewhere along his trajectory, Chávez decided to cast himself as a "fighter against Yankee imperialism." Once that decision was made, all other considerations became secondary. The elimination of poverty could wait for another day. As for Simón Bolívar's philosophy, it could be twisted to suit the new "heroic discourse."
Under Maduro, anti-Americanism morphed into a neo-Bolivarian gospel that justified any excess in the "fight against Yankee imperialism," including turning a blind eye to drug traffickers from the whole region to flood US markets in what Trump sees as "aggression by drugs" to justify military action at sea against Venezuelan criminal gangs.
Chávez and Maduro set up something called the Bolivarian Alliance in Latin America. But the regimes he managed to attract, that is to say Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia, are more of anachronistic Communist setups than Bolivarian constructs.
Bolívar insisted on the separation of religion and state. Bolívar was on the side of the poor people. Bolívar wanted Latin America to seek allies among Western democracies, not the potentates of the Orient.
Bolívar wanted Latin America to compete with the United States by enhancing its own freedoms, improving its educational system, achieving economic growth, and developing its culture. Bolívar did not believe that seeking the destruction of the United States was a worthy goal for any sane person, let alone a nation.
Machado is campaigning for a return of sanity to Venezuela's politics, a nation that by the 1980s had embarked on the bumpy road to democracy, something that included Chávez's election as the first "native" to become president of Venezuela and Maduro's initial smooth and legal succession.
Bolívar died in 1830 and is buried in next-door Colombia, but never forgot Venezuela as the "jewel" in the crown of his long campaign for liberation. Had he been here today, he would have sent a bouquet of roses to Machado for her non-violent, but no less courageous, fight for freedom.
Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987.
Gatestone Institute would like to thank the author for his kind permission to reprint this article in slightly different form from Asharq Al-Awsat. He graciously serves as Chairman of Gatestone Europe.
