Perhaps the only positive to emerge from the launch of President Trump’s farcical “Board of Peace” will be a modeling contract for Paraguay’s “young and handsome” president, Santiago Peña? Good for him. But even in this context, Trump’s obsession with machismo is no compliment. “I don’t like young, handsome men,” he leered, lecherously, of Peña. “Women I like.”
Beyond this, the inaugural meeting of the board was, fittingly, a disaster. Hearing Trump’s Mar-a-Lago playlist piped into a room full of second-rate world leaders as they waited for the self-styled Pied Piper of Peace was juvenile at best. And maybe that’s the point: This latest cockamamie scheme resembles every other money-making grab Trump has mastered throughout his life—doomed from the start.
Trump’s initiatives all fold like a flimsy card table in the end. They look sturdy when first set up but eventually buckle under the weight of the poker chips stacked on top. In this case, those chips are the proverbial $1 billion buy-ins from participating “Board of Peace” countries.
To anyone with a shred of decorum, diplomacy is about advancing human rights, avoiding military intervention, and engaging in the agonizing work of delicate statecraft. For Trump, it’s about two dozen saps sitting in his high-stakes room, paying the rake while he adds some bells and whistles, and watching him walk away with a humongous piece of the pot.
But don’t tell that to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who parroted Trump in claiming the board will prove to be the “most consequential international body in history.”
It is consequential in one sense. It resembles a global Monopoly board, where the finances are handled by a single banker. Yes, he’s cheating. The Monopoly banker always does. He will suffer no consequences even if he has to go directly to jail, since he always ends up with a get out of jail free card. He’ll never go bankrupt either, even when the math doesn’t add up.
Trump has already pledged $10 billion in U.S. taxpayer commitment to the venture. But the real revenue model comes from “Permanent Members,” each required to cough up a membership fee, just like Mar-a-Lago. Peace, it seems, carries a steep, ego-driven price.
Which dovetails—and not in the dove-of-peace sense—into Trump’s ego-fueled pursuit of a “Piece of the Nobel.” For years, he has yearned for one, railing like a cantankerous child against the Nobel Committee in Norway and claiming they owed him one for “solving eight wars.” Perhaps nine is the benchmark?
Clearly, this new venture is his warped attempt to force the Nobel Committee’s hand. Convincing this board—a collection of jagged playing pieces from the world’s most ragged regimes—to honor him likely won’t be difficult. From the ethos that authoritarian birds of a feather flock together come board members Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus among others. Rarely has a self-described “peace” body included members who invade neighboring countries, unleash secret police, crush dissidents, skim billions from public coffers, and rig elections.
The G7, the United Kingdom, and the Pope—a man who actually understands peace—have, meanwhile, all kept their distance.
Perhaps the most troubling piece of the “Board of Peace” puzzle is the total absence of accountability. In its charter, Trump grants himself the power to veto all decisions and serve as final authority on the “meaning, interpretation, and application” of the board’s rules. There is no oversight. No congressional check. No independent agency or inspector general. It is a financial black hole. And for Trump, financial black holes tend to become cash cows.
We know how this ends. Trump’s business record resembles a necropolis of ventures once touted as “the greatest ever.”
The Board of Peace will be no different. It will end in pieces. And when it does, the self-styled “Chairman for Life” will already be chasing his next piece of the action while the board, and any genuine pursuit of peace, lies in shambles.
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