“Will your newly announced Board of Peace to oversee the end of the Gaza war replace the UN?” a reporter asked Donald Trump Tuesday during his press conference at the White House to mark the first anniversary of his return to power. “It might,” the U.S. president replied. “The UN just hasn’t been very helpful. I’m a big fan of the UN’s potential, but it has never lived up to its potential. The UN should have settled every one of the wars that I settled. I never went to them. I never even thought to go to them.” He then added: “I believe you got to let the UN continue because the potential is so great.”

Earlier, during a monologue of over 80 minutes in which he exaggerated the achievements of his first year back in power, Trump had linked the matter to one of his great obsessions: those “eight” conflicts that he claims he has resolved in “10 months,” and the Nobel Peace Prize he covets.

In addition to reaffirming his claim to the award, his statement on Tuesday served to further unsettle those who fear that Trump is considering using this exclusive club to sideline the 80-year-old UN as part of his multi-pronged attack on the international order, which he has intensified in recent weeks.

At least 60 countries have received an invitation to join the Board of Peace since Washington announced its formation last Friday. It is slated to be chaired by Trump “indefinitely” and includes his son-in-law Jared Kushner; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, a longtime friend of the U.S. president; and former British prime minister Tony Blair.

A dozen capitals, in a list that grows by the hour, have already announced their participation. These include countries ranging from Albania to Israel — despite the latter’s discomfort with the participation of Egypt and Qatar — and Morocco, Argentina, and Hungary. Some are long-standing allies of the United States. Others depend too heavily on U.S. support to defy Washington. The rest have leaders close to Trump.

On the Republican’s agenda Thursday at the Davos Economic Forum, the presentation of the Board of Peace stands out. It will take place a day after his incendiary, belligerent speech, which sent shockwaves through Europe with his insistence on annexing Greenland. In that speech, he stated he did not plan to “use force,” before affirming that a preliminary agreement with NATO was in place. Some 35 countries have been invited to the event, according to the White House.

While the motivations of its initial partners seem clear, the merits required for an invitation beyond Washington’s discretion, its final composition, and the extent of its mission beyond its primary objective — advancing the peace plan imposed by the United States on Israel and Hamas to end the Gaza war — are less so. Its founding document doesn’t even mention the Gaza Strip.

It is also a mystery which of its members will be willing to pay the $1 billion that a permanent seat will cost. Washington maintains that this money will be used for the reconstruction of Gaza, although its plans have not yet been made public.

No outlay

Among those who have already agreed, some countries have indicated they will not pay that amount. Others, such as France, Italy, Sweden, and Norway, have announced they will not participate, even without a fee. Paris’s decision angered Trump, who threatened a 200% tariff on French wine and champagne. Spain is among those still “studying” the advisability of joining. China and Russia are in the same situation.

The leap from the initial configuration of the Board of Peace — defined in the plan for Gaza as a supervisory body for the truce between Israel and Hamas and endorsed by the UN Security Council — to its current mutation has put global diplomacy on alert and the UN in an uncomfortable position. The United States abandoned a dozen of its agencies recently in another attack by Trump on the multilateralism that emerged from the ashes of World War II.

In last Friday’s text, it is clear that the intention is to go beyond the Middle East, given that the board’s objective is “to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.”

Everything seems to stem from the U.S. president’s desire to undermine the international order to bend it to his will and his vanity. According to the draft bylaws of the board, Trump will remain president indefinitely, and this includes the possibility of him continuing even after leaving the White House in 2029, since the U.S. Constitution prevents him from running for president again, except in the unlikely, though not impossible, event that he amends it. Only a unanimous vote by the board can remove him. His successor will only have the power to appoint a representative of Washington to the club.

Meanwhile, it’s also unclear how the board will oversee the truce between Israel and Hamas, or for how long, although two subcommittees have already been created to advance that plan. What is certain is that, for the moment, no Palestinian is a member of or has been invited to join the board.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition