Ad hoc coalitions are nothing new in international politics. In 2003, in order to provide some degree of international legitimacy to the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq (since there was no clear mandate from the United Nations Security Council), a “coalition of the willing” of around fifty states was created, many of which were involved mainly at a political or symbolic level. In recent months, another coalition of the willing of a different kind has been launched at the initiative of the British and the French, aimed at the possible deployment of a ceasefire monitoring and peacekeeping mission in Ukraine—whose chances of being realized, at present, seem truly daunting.
When, in one of the 20 points of the Trump Plan for Gaza, the creation of a “Board of Peace”—a Peace Council—was announced, later endorsed by a controversial resolution of the Security Council (No. 2803/2025, adopted with Russian and Chinese abstentions), the expectation was that this would amount to yet another revised and updated version of the usual “coalition of the willing” format.
The reality is quite different: we are facing something unprecedented and potentially lethal to the United Nations themselves. Trump, after all, holds the UN in contempt, as his speech before the General Assembly in September 2025 made clear—an outright act of derision, a public exercise in ridicule. In his telling, the United Nations amounted to little more than a broken escalator and a malfunctioning teleprompter, a jab at two technical glitches that occurred during his visit to the Glass Palace. The UN, Trump claimed, is capable of nothing more than producing empty words; and unlike himself—whom he cast as a successful mediator of otherwise insoluble conflicts, unfairly denied the Nobel Peace Prize—empty words, he insisted, do not end wars.
In the invitation letter sent to heads of state and government, Trump announces the creation of the Board as a “Historic and Magnificent effort to solidify peace in the Middle East and, at the same time, to embark on a bold new approach to resolving Global Conflict!” The Board of Peace is described as “the most impressive and consequential Board ever assembled, which will be established as a new International Organization and a Transitional Governing Administration.”
The Council explicitly presents itself as “an international organization that seeks to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected by or threatened by conflict.”
This is not, therefore, just about Gaza, but about a body with global ambitions, meant to promote supposedly “common-sense” solutions (one of the mantras of MAGA politics), deliberately departing from “approaches and institutions” deemed to have failed. As the founding charter puts it, “durable peace requires pragmatic judgement, common-sense solutions, and the courage to depart from approaches and institutions that have too often failed.”
The Board of Peace’s mission is decidedly interventionist and ambiguously legalistic, invoking international law alongside initiatives approved by the Board itself. Indeed, it “shall undertake such peace-building functions in accordance with international law and as may be approved in accordance with this Charter, including the development and dissemination of best practices capable of being applied to all nations and communities seeking peace.”
In the past, we have repeatedly witnessed attempts to delegitimize the United Nations through the rhetoric of so-called “effective multilateralism,” a phrase typically invoked by great powers when the UN refuses to endorse their political and strategic objectives. Here, however, the move goes further. In essence, Trump’s Board aims to supplant the UN Security Council.
It is telling that the Board of Peace is based on a 13-article document grandiosely labeled a “Charter,” which is certainly not the product of an international conference—as was the case at Dumbarton Oaks in 1944 for the first draft of the United Nations Charter—but rather a blueprint drawn up behind closed doors by Trump’s advisers, following a corporate, contract-like model.
It is, moreover, an international body whose members are appointed by the president (Trump) through co-optation and can be dismissed by him at any time unless backed by a two-thirds majority of the Board. One may, however, purchase a “permanent seat” for the modest sum of one billion dollars during the first year of operation. No Secretary-General (an antiquated and bureaucratic custom), but a chief executive instead. The president unilaterally designates his successor (with no elections) and relinquishes the post—apparently without any term limit—only in the event of voluntary resignation or proven incapacity, as determined by a unanimous vote of the Board.
For decades, there has been endless and largely fruitless debate over proposals to reform the United Nations, especially the Security Council. Trump has taken care of it: as in the aftermath of corporate failures, the UN becomes “the bad company,” and the new Board of Peace “the good company.”
A body of this kind, which presents itself as an alternative—if not an outright challenge—to the existing multilateral framework, calls for serious political reflection on the grave consequences for the already fragile architecture of international institutions, not to mention the obvious constitutional and rule-of-law implications for democratic countries. For the governments of such states, to join it as it stands—treating accession as a routine formality under pressure from Trump, without demanding (if that is even possible) substantial and far-reaching changes to make it democratic and legitimate, as well as far more realistic and focused in its aims—would amount to a serious lapse of judgment and a very risky move.
The Board of Peace emerges from a dangerous trend toward the privatization of sovereignty, which—far from belonging to the people and to peoples—is outsourced (by the United Nations themselves) and commodified. It falls into the same category as for-profit ventures masquerading as international organizations. This is the model of “private providers” of sovereign functions followed, for example, in the creation of the notorious Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, to which Americans and Israelis entrusted the management of humanitarian aid in the Strip, with disastrous and criminal results. For the United Nations, legitimizing this model—as happened with UNSC Resolution 2803/25—amounts to an admission of the international organization’s own failure, as it outsources its duties to the strongest, most heavily armed and aggressive government, or to dealmakers and real-estate interests. It is nothing less than an abdication, since the only true Board of Peace ought to be the Security Council itself.
After all, the entire global political landscape is populated—as the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, remarked some time ago—by “figures of neo-feudal lords of the third millennium, modern-day privateers granted letters of marque, who aspire to be entrusted with fiefdoms in the public sphere, to manage portions of the commons represented by cyberspace and outer space, almost as usurpers of democratic sovereignties.” This is what Giuliano da Empoli calls “the hour of the predator,” in the book of the same name, or the new golden age of the “Borgias.” Today, da Empoli argues, the hour of the predator has struck, and everywhere things are evolving in such a way that everything that is to be decided will be decided with fire and sword.
Trump’s focus on American interests in managing both the Ukraine dossier and the Middle East dossier prioritizes relative gains (net advantages for the United States) over absolute gains (the “gross” global public goods). The United States, once the “indispensable nation,” as Madeleine Albright famously put it, a guarantor of multilateralism, is gradually turning into an extractive power.
The so-called Board of Peace, originally conceived for Gaza, thus proposes a mechanism of political and economic control over the area that centralizes the management of reconstruction in American hands, creates financial and operational dependencies, and enables the United States to steer contracts, procurement, and investments as political leverage over regional actors.
Nobel Prize–winning economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, in their book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, define extractive institutions as systems designed to extract income and wealth from one social group and transfer them to another. Applied on a global scale, this framework implies that a superpower shapes its foreign policy to extract resources, economic advantages, and strategic rents from the rest of the world—including its allies—for the benefit of its own citizens, or rather, as in Trump’s America, only the privileged segment tied to political power.
In conclusion, the Board of Peace cannot be understood as a tool aimed at transforming or resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, particularly with regard to Gaza’s future. On the contrary, it operates as a mechanism for the authoritarian governance of violence, designed not to overcome the conditions that generate conflict but to contain its effects through coercive practices. This approach entails abandoning any intervention on the historical and political causes of the conflict, dispensing with policies of reconciliation or restorative justice, and systematically excluding the affected populations from any meaningful decision-making process.
In this framework, the functioning of the Board appears consistent with a logic that privileges the rule of force, normalizes forced expulsion as a technique of “stabilization,” and reframes war as a lever for territorial reorganization and exploitation. The creation of a body of surveillance and control composed of external actors—a redux of the East India Company’s governing councils—tasked with regulating and disciplining Palestinian society, while also exploiting the economic potential of reconstruction for their own benefit, takes on a distinctly neocolonial character. More than a Board of Peace, it is a Board of Unpeace: one that perpetuates occupation and indeed makes it structural, turning it into ground rent; erases the political subjectivity of the Palestinian people; and lays the groundwork for new resentments and structural injustices.
Cover photo: US President Donald Trump speaks at the “Board of Peace” meeting during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 22, 2026. US President Donald Trump will show off his new “Board of Peace” at Davos on January 22, 2026 burnishing his claim to be a peacemaker a day after backing off his own threats against Greenland. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)