Trump’s Peace Through Strength Delivers on Women, Peace and Security
Unedited photo SantanaZ, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
When Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado accepted the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, she made headlines for her courage but also for whom she thanked.
“I dedicate this prize to the people of Venezuela — and to President Donald Trump for his decisive support of our cause.”
For the diplomatic establishment the statement may be startling. But to those who understand the foundations of the Women, Peace & Security (WPS) initiative — the US law and UN framework aimed at forging durable peace — Machado’s gratitude made perfect sense. In her view, Trump’s strategy of confronting narco-authoritarian regimes and ending protracted conflicts has delivered what WPS was designed to achieve: peace that protects civilians, empowers civil society, and lasts.
A popular misconception is that WPS exists mainly as a bottom-up formula centering on gender equality as a prerequisite to peace and security. That’s why so much of WPS advocacy focuses on the role of women at the peace table, repeal of discriminatory laws against women, and focusing on the particular impact of war on women and girls. But it is mainly the other way around. Peace and security, when forged as a top-down affair, benefit not only women but also their families and the broader civilian population that so often bears the brunt of modern war.
At a time when civilians make up most wartime casualties, ending war by military victory or negotiated settlement decreases civilian harm including particular harm to women through sexual violence. Only then can communities rebuild – extremely difficult where populations are traumatized. Thus, the terms of peace matter if a stable, democratic society is one of the goals.
Machado, Venezuela, and Trump’s Doctrine of Strength
For more than two decades, María Corina Machado has embodied Venezuela’s democratic resistance. Jailed, exiled, and targeted by Nicolás Maduro’s regime, she never stopped organizing for the cause of peace, security, and freedom in Venezuela. She won last year’s presidential election, but Maduro refused to yield. The Nobel Committee honored her for her “tireless struggle for democratic rights and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
She spoke from hiding in her Nobel interview and a later conversation with Bari Weiss on Honestly, when Machado explained why she credited Trump:
“President Trump understood what few in the international community would admit — that in Venezuela, the cartels are not outside the government. They are the government.”
Trump’s 2020 declaration of war on Venezuelan drug cartels — combined with sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and naval operations in the Caribbean — directly weakened the Maduro regime’s criminal network. Machado argued that those measures “gave Venezuelans, especially women leading in civil society, the space to organize for peace.”
That position reflects one of WPS’s founding insights: peace is impossible while civilians live under systems of organized violence. By confronting the cartels and exposing state-sponsored trafficking, Trump’s policy advanced the women’s protection and their participation in political life.
Peace as Immediate Relief – and Equal Protection
Critics often cast WPS as a niche “gender” initiative. Done right, it is a practical humanitarian framework. Every dismantled trafficking route reduces exploitation, every disarmed militia allows families — mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters — to return home.
The Middle East ceasefire reached this October is a case in point. After months of escalating violence, Trump helped broker an agreement between Israel and Hamas that halted hostilities and opened humanitarian corridors. Refugees are returning, hostages are being released, and reconstruction funds are flowing.
What sets WPS apart is its focus on the home they return to. A traumatized population should not be expected to implement a peace deal that does not recognize the context of the war on families. For example, negotiators cannot expect Gazan women to embrace returning Hamas prisoners into their communities without recognizing the havoc they may have wreaked on them personally or on their community. Consulting those mothers, on the other hand, can make the difference between fragile peace and failed peace.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who co-sponsored the Women, Peace & Security Act of 2017, has argued that stable democracies make the best allies. As Rubio recently noted, “WPS is fulfilled not in conferences, but in the calm that follows when a mother can send her children to school without fear.” That pragmatic view — linking human security directly to peace enforcement — defines the current U.S. approach. It is an approach that could be applied to other pressure points such as the Middle East, Syria, Ukraine, and in cases of fragility and insecurity from Afghanistan to Uganda.
Answering the Silence
Strikingly, some organizations that champion WPS have remained silent about these breakthroughs. Perhaps they are reluctant to credit an administration they oppose politically. But if the mission of WPS is to protect civilians, the movement cannot afford selective celebration. If WPS is to have a future beyond the sunsetting of the law in 2027, intellectual honesty is essential. So is giving credit where it is due.
Peace through strength is not a contradiction — it is how lasting peace has always been achieved. When wars end and civilians are no longer cower in shelters, that too is women’s empowerment. It is the practical realization of everything UN Security Council Resolution 1325 envisioned when it launched WPS 25 years ago.
The point is not who achieves peace, but that peace is achieved — and sustained for all. If that requires unorthodox leadership, so be it. As history reminds us, the surest ally of peace is often strength. “Peace that lasts is peace that protects,” Machado said, “And that is what we are beginning to see.”