The Board of Peace Stands to Usurp the United Nations - The Colgate Maroon-News

Why be president for four years when you can be Dictator-For-Life? President Trump’s new Board of Peace hosted its inaugural meeting on Feb. 19 in Washington. It was a curious scene, lacking our European allies, but including the “peaceful” and assuredly “democratic” countries of Saudi Arabia, Belarus, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and several other nations. We were treated to a sneak preview of the meaning of “peace” in the new global order, where money and power are requisite to respect and protection.

The Board of Peace has rapidly ballooned into a vestige of the President’s political favor despite its establishment by United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803 for political detente and rebuilding in Gaza. In text acquired by the Times of Israel, the newspaper questions how the Board’s Charter fails to mention its tie to the United Nations or to the Gaza Peace Plan at all, despite the UN Resolution limiting the length of the peacekeeping mission to 2027.

Trump has further demanded that countries pay the organization $1 billion for a permanent seat on the council, following the expiration of their “free membership” in 2029. Trump is side-stepping the limits of the United Nations to create his own extrajudicial bully pulpit, in which money is valued more than truth and honesty. Canada, a country one may expect to be in good standing with the United States, had its invitation rescinded following a speech at Davos from Prime Minister Mike Carney, in which he criticized President Trump’s reorganization of the international order. Russia, meanwhile, was invited by the President to join the Board despite actively waging a war of aggression against Ukraine.

The conduct of President Trump is not shocking to anyone who has followed American politics for the last decade. It follows the typical pattern of the President lashing out against those who displease him while rewarding those who flatter him. As an American who has spent considerable time abroad, this represents more than just the latest vanity project, instead showing a darker side of the President’s unyielding ambitions to bend the world to his will. The absence of critical nations, countries that share our foundational values of democracy, individual freedoms and the liberalism of the 1700s, are being replaced by theocratic, corrupt nations with penchants for human rights abuses. This change is disheartening and un-American. America is supposed to be a bastion of free speech, the land of bright innovation and individual rights. Instead, America is cozying up to the highest bidder, unconcerned with the moral track records of inept countries that treat their own citizens in ways that should make us revile their very presence at our table.

Trump’s organization of the Board, with his very American self-appointment as “Chairman for Life,” reeks of something more expected from the National People’s Conference or Volkskammer than from the President of the United States. Furthermore there is an incredible prospect of conflict of power and interest that, following the conclusion of his final term, President Trump will be extrajudicially administering a foreign territory from Washington while a different president is in office. One cannot help but wonder if Trump’s Maoian grasp on such a powerful committee is done out of the desire of an aging man to retain power and relevance, or as a means to maintain his “Presidency” in a sort of shadow government. Regardless of the reason, the potential for conflict alone should alarm even the most ardent Trump supporters. Of course, it would be wishful thinking that they would be concerned at all.

Ultimately, the Board of Peace represents an ugly new era of realpolitik where power and force speak much more loudly than truth and virtue. The President is extending the limits of his power at the cost of actual peace, surrounding America with bedfellows who would be prone to cut her throat in her sleep. Although it’s proved popular with many Trump critics, I think the Thucydidean adage from the Melian Dialogue sums up the entirety of the point well: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”