Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” was originally intended to be part of a post-war plan for Gaza. Without formal discussions, the US President is now poised to turn this part of the peace agreement into a competitor to the United Nations — a move that will boost Russia and its Brics allies’ longstanding desire to create a “multipolar world order” which carves up the globe into spheres of influence.

Today the Kremlin claimed that Trump has extended an invitation to Vladimir Putin, making what initially looked like a diplomatic victory for the US appear closer to the embryonic form of a dangerous rethinking of the international order. This looks even more absurd, given the recent attacks that have seen a freezing Kyiv go almost without power for several weeks. Reports suggest that as many as 60 countries will be invited to the new board.

According to the draft charter disseminated alongside invitations, whose acceptance will seemingly rest on a nation’s billion-dollar payment to Trump, the Board of Peace will now have a remit far beyond Gaza. Instead, it will be a “nimble and effective international peace-building body” that seeks to promote “dependable and lawful governance”. This language uncannily parallels the UN Charter, which declares the intention “to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace”, while undermining it: the Gaza Board will be “nimble”; the UN Charter is by implication ponderous and ineffective.

But the more fundamental shift may be in the kind of international order that is being proposed. The United Nations is slow because it is rule-bound. Trump’s board, by contrast, gestures toward a system of ad hoc peace management, built not on universal membership and standing law, but on selective participation, financial buy-in, and the authority of those powerful enough to convene others. In essence, pay fealty to Trump — who implicitly seems to propose to remain chairman in perpetuity — and anyone, no matter what rules they do or don’t adhere to, can have their say. Putin will be licking his lips as he eyes a weakened Ukraine, and Xi Jinping will be rethinking his Taiwan policy.

Indeed, the board may encourage the longstanding ambitions of Russia and China to weaken global institutions and replace them with looser, interest-driven arrangements. Moscow’s foreign-policy doctrine has for years emphasized “multipolarity”: a world of negotiated spheres, temporary alignments, and transactional deals. Most of that multipolar solidarity has resulted not in reliable or fruitful collaborations but in chaos and disagreement — and has hardly encouraged peace in the former Soviet space or in the Middle East. A US-led “Board of Peace” that sidelines the UN while bringing Russia, Belarus and Vietnam into a new forum would realize part of that multipolar project, but equally replicate its deep flaws.

The deeper danger is not in aiding Putin in the here and now. After all, dictators come and go. Institutions like the UN, however, are designed to outlast governments. The new board’s authority, if it has any, flows from a single political figure; its remit from a charter that can be revised as quickly as it was issued.

What happens when one of its members openly violates the principles of peace it claims to defend? The storms are already brewing. Trump has wavered repeatedly over Ukraine over the past year, oscillating between dealmaking, occasional sympathy for the country’s population, and outright hostility to Nato commitments. Putin’s continued prosecution of the war — which is far from any notion of “dependable and lawful governance” — would quickly turn the Board of Peace into a stress test. What if India and Pakistan, two invitee nations, were to go to war? Would Trump discipline or boot out a member? Redefine the charter unilaterally? Or simply, flush with billions of dollars in cash, lose interest and move on?

In recent years, UN authority has been badly eroded by its paralysis over Ukraine and Gaza. Trust in multilateralism is low. The ground may be fertile for alternatives, but building a simulacrum of the UN without the legal foundations, procedural depth, and long-term commitments that have buttressed its successes since 1945 will not end conflicts. Instead, it will create them.

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Dr. Ian Garner is assistant professor of totalitarian studies at the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw. His latest book is Z Generation: Russia’s Fascist Youth (Hurst).

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