A world on its knees: Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ and the darkness it promises
US president Donald Trump signs a founding charter at the ‘Board of Peace’ meeting during the World Economic Forum in Davos on 22 January 2026
Craig Mokhiber writes in Mondoweiss on 22 January 2026:
Trembling and genuflecting before the global rampage of the US-Israel Axis, a cowardly world has, once again, offered up the Palestinian people for sacrifice, and, with them, the global system of international law itself.
I have written previously about the document of global surrender, codified in notorious (and blatantly unlawful) UN Security Council Resolution 2803 and about Trump’s outrageous imperial dictates upon which that resolution was based.
But the latest outrage, declared by the empire in the form of an autocratic “Charter of the Board of Peace,” threatens not only the survival of the indigenous Palestinian people, but, in its expansive and unqualified language that includes no limits of territorial jurisdiction, that of the entire world.
An imperial charter
Conceived as a Trump-headed “international organization,” the body is to have “international legal personality,” “legal capacity,” and international “privileges and immunities.”
In a barely veiled preambular swipe at established international institutions like the United Nations, the imperial Charter opens with a call to “depart from approaches and institutions that have too often failed” before declaring itself in its first article to be empowered to act in any “areas affected or threatened by conflict.”
In other words, Trump’s goal is to replace the law-based UN with an imperial mechanism, the imperial reach of this unaccountable, rogue entity is to be global, and its impunity is to be effectively guaranteed.
The ultimately autocratic nature of the new entity is made clear throughout the Charter, with most powers vested not in any accountable, intergovernmental, collaborative, or democratic mechanism, nor even in any single state, but rather in the person of Donald Trump himself.
As such, Trump is explicitly empowered to serve both as the Chair and as the representative of the United States on the Board “subject only to the provisions of [the Charter],” to solely determine the members of the Board, to approve any alternates, to renew the terms of members, to remove members (unless a 2/3 vote of the crony-packed Board decides they should stay), to decide the agenda of the Board, to convene extraordinary meetings, to personally issue “resolutions or other directives,” and to approve all decisions of the Board.
Trump will also have “exclusive authority” to create, modify, and dissolve subsidiary bodies, to establish subcommittees and to personally set their mandate, structure, and rules, to select, appoint, and remove members of the Executive Board of the Board of Peace (at his sole discretion), to veto any decisions of the Executive Board, and to call additional meetings of the Executive Board.
He is to remain as the Chair of the Board of Peace unless he resigns voluntarily or becomes incapacitated, is empowered to designate his own successor as Chair, and to be the final authority on “meaning, interpretations, and application” of the Charter. And only he can approve any amendments to the Charter.
The Charter is, in sum, an authoritarian dream for Trump, and an Orwellian nightmare for the rest of the world.