After several days of bombast and speculation, President Donald Trump debuted his “Board of Peace” to a global audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday. Flanked by nearly two dozen heads of state, Trump said that, once fully operational, his board will be able to do “pretty much whatever we want to do” — although, he promised, “we’ll do it in conjunction with the United Nations.” But as a fuller picture of this multinational body comes into focus, so too do questions about the board’s governance, structure and its potentially world-disrupting aims.
‘Board of action’
While “initially envisioned to shepherd” Trump’s plans for post-war Gaza, senior Trump administration officials framed the board during its Thursday signing ceremony as a “vehicle for broader ambitions,” said The Washington Post. While officials have advertised the board as a “tool to resolve global conflicts” with a scope “rivaling the UN,” it is “unclear” if Trump’s pledge to work alongside the United Nations will “ease concerns among some leaders” that he is trying to “sideline the international body.”
“This isn’t the United States,” Trump said Thursday, “this is for the world.” The group “can spread it out to other things” as it works in Gaza. “This is not just a board of peace,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said. “This is a board of action.”
Since Trump’s board has “morphed into something far more ambitious” than its initial Gaza-centric impetus, international “skepticism about its membership and mandate” has prompted some countries “usually closest to Washington” to “take a pass,” said The Associated Press. Representatives at the body’s signing ceremony in Davos were “mostly from the Middle East, Asia and South America,” said CNN. The 19 nations present were “far fewer than the roughly 35 that a senior administration official predicted,” and European leaders were “visibly absent.”
Despite initially inviting Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to join the nascent group, Trump rescinded the offer after Carney delivered a Davos speech “describing a ‘rupture’” with the U.S. “over tariffs and Greenland,” said USA Today. Similarly, by denying invitations to the African Union and sub-Saharan nations on the continent, Trump has “shown his disdain for Africa yet again,” said Bloomberg.
Simmering tensions between some of the body’s newly signed member-states could ultimately taint the enterprise. After initially spurning the board, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed this week to join, despite recent polling showing that 53% of Israelis “view the Turkish-Qatari involvement in the Board of Peace as an ‘Israeli failure,’” said Al Jazeera.
Lifetime leadership and ‘voluntary’ contributions
Unsurprisingly, Trump is “expected to chair the board” and could potentially “hold the position for life,” said ABC News. The group will also feature “senior political, diplomatic and business figures,” including billionaires Jared Kushner and Marc Rowan, said Fox News. At the same time, initial reports of a required $1 billion buy-in have been downplayed by the White House. Participation beyond any “voluntary” donation “does not carry any mandatory funding obligation,” an anonymous administration official said to the Post.
Ultimately, Trump’s board is a “direct assault on the United Nations,” said University of Cambridge International Law Professor Marc Weller to The New York Times. The project is “likely to be seen as a takeover of the world order” by “one individual in his own image.”
What began as a plan to redevelop the Gaza Strip is quickly emerging as a new lever of global power for a president intent on upending the standing world order
