Peace Theatre

Donald Trump’s new ‘Board of Peace’ has arrived with all the thump and glitter of a Las Vegas unveiling. Big, brash and self-regarding, it is riddled with contradictions so glaring that they scarcely need pointing out. India, the world’s most populous democracy and a country with a long record in peacekeeping, has wisely abstained itself from Trump’s jamboree. Pakistan, a state whose relationship with militancy has been documented for decades, has predictably joined in, clinging on to the US’ coattails.

The board was inaugurated as an instrument to shore up Gaza’s brittle ceasefire. Trump, who will chair it himself, insists it could eventually rival the United Nations even while claiming it will work alongside that much-maligned institution. Once fully formed, Trump boasted that they can do pretty much whatever we want to do. That sentence alone explains why many US allies have politely stayed away.

The membership is eclectic to the point of incoherence. Alongside Middle Eastern powers such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Egypt sit Hungary, Belarus, Mongolia and Uzbekistan. Argentina is in; Canada was briefly in, then publicly expelled on social media for declining to pay the $1bn membership fee. France and Britain have declined to join while China is silent. Putin’s Russia says it is “studying” the idea while offering to pay its fee out of frozen American assets, a suggestion akin to performance art than sober diplomacy.

No other permanent member of the UN Security Council has committed to join. Nor, at the launch, were representatives of Israel or the Palestinian Authority present, despite Gaza being the board’s ostensible reason for existence.

The inclusion of Pakistan is particularly striking. Islamabad has spent years insisting it is a victim, not a patron, of terrorism.

To elevate such a state as a custodian of peace, is either an act of staggering insouciance or calculated provocation. Either way, it drains the board of credibility before it has begun.

Trump’s defenders argue that the board is pragmatic, given that it demands serious money to ensure seriousness of intent. But peace is not a country club. By charging a $1bn entry fee, Trump is already principle out of the window.

Is the board meant to be a parallel United Nations, or a substitute for it? Trump’s rhetoric has long veered between contempt for multilateral institutions and a desire to eclipse them. The UN, flawed though it is, rests on universality, procedure and consent. The Board of Peace rests on invitation, payment and presidential whim.

Peace processes are complex things depending on trust, inclusion and a shared sense of fairness. A body that sidelines key stakeholders, embraces dubious ones, and concentrates power in a single-chairman risks achieving the opposite of its stated aim. The danger is not that Trump will replace the UN. It is that, by turning peace into a spectacle, he will cheapen it and leave the world more divided than before.