“Board of Peace”: A parallel UN under absolute US hegemony

Donald Trump’s announcement in Davos regarding the creation of a so-called “Board of Peace” is not a gesture of pacification, but an act of political engineering by US imperialism.

It is a deliberate attempt to construct a parallel United Nations, emptied of any principle of sovereignty, international legality or genuine multilateralism, and placed under the absolute control of the United States, with Israel as a privileged strategic partner.

The fact that Trump designated Gaza as the starting point for the board’s activities is no coincidence. Gaza today is the epicentre of an ongoing genocide, perpetrated by Israel with unrestricted political, military, financial and diplomatic support from the US.

Turning Gaza into the inaugural “laboratory” of this board is, in practice, the normalisation of genocide, transforming the total destruction of a people into a platform for the neocolonial reorganisation of the international system.

Under the cynical discourse of “peace”, Trump seeks to manage the post-genocide scenario, not to ensure justice, self-determination or sovereign Palestinian reconstruction, but to impose a new regional arrangement based on political submission, Israeli security, and strategic control over Middle Eastern resources and routes. The “Board of Peace” is thus born stained with Palestinian blood.

This initiative must be understood within the context of the structural crisis of US hegemony. Although the US still holds veto power in the UN Security Council, its ability to impose decisions uncontested is in decline.

The rise of emerging powers, the fragmentation of the international system, and the loss of credibility of Western-controlled institutions are pushing Washington towards parallel mechanisms that are more authoritarian, more opaque, and far less subject to any legal restraint.

The “Board of Peace” is the ultimate expression of this headlong flight forward: an informal body with no basis in international law, in which the US positions itself as judge, enforcer and ultimate beneficiary of global decisions. A board where the veto ceases to be institutional and becomes imperial, exercised in practice and without disguise.

The Davos staging revealed even more. The absence of the main European powers — Germany, France and the United Kingdom — laid bare the internal fractures within the Western bloc.

This absence is neither irrelevant nor merely protocol-related: it expresses discomfort, distrust and, to some extent, European refusal to endorse an initiative that reeks of unilateral adventurism, especially at a moment when Gaza brutally exposes the moral bankruptcy of the West.

Trump expected global legitimisation, but obtained the support of fewer than twenty countries, most of them authoritarian regimes, fragile governments or states dependent on US tutelage.

Trump’s triumphalist statements about “the beginning of peace in the world” sound like mockery in the face of Gaza’s ruins. There can be no peace outside international law, outside the UN Charter, outside recognition of peoples’ right to self-determination. And this is precisely the legal framework that the US and “Israel” have systematically violated, from Palestine to Iraq, from Syria to Lebanon.

Israeli participation in the announcement was revealing. “Israel” does not need the board to continue its aggressive policy. It only needs it to legitimise the fait accompli — that is, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide framed as “security issues”.

Even more serious is the fact that the “Board of Peace” is linked to an agenda of regional escalation, in which Iran emerges as a central target.

By reorganising the international system starting from Gaza, the US seeks to create the political and diplomatic conditions to isolate Iran, justify new sanctions, covert operations and, eventually, direct military aggression.

Gaza is not the end. It is the beginning of a broader offensive against any pole of resistance to the US imperial order.

In the Middle East, the perception is growing that Trump operates according to classic colonial logic: impose by force, divide to rule, exploit resources and crush resistance. Historically, this logic has never produced peace — only wars, coups, forced displacement and endless cycles of violence.

Trump’s rise is not a deviation, but the radicalisation of a model in crisis. The attempt to replace the UN with boards controlled by the empire does not demonstrate strength, but strategic desperation.

Trump’s “Board of Peace” does not inaugurate a new era of stability. It inaugurates an even more dangerous phase of imperialism, in which genocide in Gaza is treated as a detail, war against Iran as a concrete possibility, and international law as a disposable obstacle.

This is not about peace. It is about domination. And the peoples of the world — from Palestine to Iran, from Latin America to Africa — know, from historical experience, that there is no peace possible under occupation, apartheid and imperial tutelage.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.