Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace.” It sounds like an imaginary superagency that kids playing might dream up, sending pretend agents out to bring peace to the world’s trouble spots.
Or even a board game. In both instances, the rules are arbitrary.
“Once this board is completely formed, we can do pretty much whatever we want to do,” the U.S. president said this week in Davos, Switzerland, as he unveiled his newly minted board members at the World Economic Forum.
Membership is by invitation only, and if a country wants a permanent seat at the table, the price tag is $1 billion US. Otherwise, terms will be three years long, or at the pleasure of the chairman for life, Donald Trump.
He’s already dusted off his “you’re fired” skills from The Apprentice, using social media to inform Prime Minister Mark Carney that his invitation had been withdrawn.
‘I don’t think Trump has much respect for the UN’
So far, about 30 countries ranging from Bulgaria to Belarus have signed on to the board that critics say is a Trumpian bid to build an alternative to the United Nations.
“I don’t think that Trump has much respect for the UN. Or again, the norms and the rules created after 1945, because every step of the way [he] drives to ignore it and to create an alternative which is dictated by him,” said Yossi Mekelberg, a fellow with the London based think-tank Chatham House.
Earlier this month, the White House moved to withdraw from, and stop funding, 31 UN agencies.
In Davos, Trump said the Board of Peace would work “in conjunction” with the UN. He also said it can “spread out to other areas.”
“I think what you’re seeing is a board that has been cobbled together for Gaza with much bigger aspirations,” said Shashank Joshi, defence editor for the Economist, “but with a set of skills and a set of people that is really very Middle East centric, and I think has quite little relevance to crises outside of that region.”
Invites to join the board reportedly describe it as a “nimble and effective international peace-building body,” widely interpreted as a swipe at the UN.
But Trump’s board owes its legitimacy to UN Security Council Resolution 2803, which in November endorsed his 20-point plan for a ceasefire in Gaza, including the establishment of the board to oversee it.
“The U.S. sought to obtain the maximum international legitimacy from the UN, while trying to keep UN influence and control over the operation as small as possible,” Marc Weller, Chatham House’s program director for international law, wrote at the time.
Only 2 EU countries have signed on
Leaked details of the board’s charter make no mention of Gaza, even though several key Middle East countries backing Palestinian statehood have signed on to it, including Qatar, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
And even though it is tasked with rebuilding Gaza, there are no Palestinians on the Board of Peace. Nor are there any on an executive board sitting under it. Palestinian representation is confined to a lower rung called the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, made up of technocrats to be supervised by the Board of Peace.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who doesn’t support a Palestinian state, has been offered and accepted a place on the board. He didn’t travel to Davos, ostensibly, because of the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for him on war crimes charges.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, also the recipient of an ICC arrest warrant, is reportedly considering his invitation.
Meanwhile, only two European Union countries have signed up: Bulgaria and Hungary.
Britain’s foreign secretary cited Putin’s invitation as one reason the U.K. is holding back. France declined, saying the board’s charter contradicts that of the UN — despite threats from Trump to slap 200 per cent tariffs on French wine.
The Economist’s Joshi said the potential undermining of the UN will be a red line for many nations, including those in the Global South.
“Yes, the UN has very serious problems. But I think that doesn’t mean that Europeans [and] many others — in South America, for example — want to see a world in which the White House, in which Trump, in which Americans acquire disproportionate power over these sorts of decisions.”
U.S. President Donald Trump has launched his ‘Board of Peace’ with an initial goal of rebuilding Gaza. The 35 signatory countries include regional Middle East powers such as Israel, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but traditional U.S. allies have been wary of joining.
Joshi thinks the Board of Peace may actually serve to strengthen the United Nations.
“This is not just a contest that the U.S. can shape by itself and say, ‘I’m done with the UN, it’s over.’ The Chinese will keep playing this game. Very powerful rising countries like Brazil and India will have a stake in the UN, and they will seek to influence its agencies and bodies more and more as the U.S. draws back.”
If it does.
Given all the hype and the contradictions and the confusion, it’s tempting to dismiss the Trump initiative as a distraction or a construct aimed at boosting the president’s ego.
But it also has power in the endorsement of the body Trump so regularly denigrates. The authority the UN resolution gave Trump and his board led to the imperfect, but desperately needed, ceasefire now in place in Gaza — and a lead role in the steps to come.
And as weak and as ineffective as Trump regularly claims the UN is, the United States still wields one of the institution’s most powerful instruments — a veto — making the rules of the game a little more complicated.
The U.S. has used it to block UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza six times since the start of the conflict in October 2023.
