Opinion

January 21, 2026 — 2:15am

On the first full day of business in his first term, US President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of talks to establish a 12-nation trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). That decision could not have shocked officials in Canberra – it was the culmination of a souring on global trade mechanisms that had seen both Trump and his opponent Hillary Clinton disavow the TPP on the campaign trail.

Then trade minister Steve Ciobo refused to concede defeat, insisting that “we are not going to walk away from pursuing high-quality trade deals that are good for Australian exports”. Despite his shadow counterpart Jason Clare declaring that Trump had “killed” the TPP, Labor would eventually fall into line and vote to support the revamped deal.

Donald Trump, pictured after his address to the United Nations in September, has proposed an alternative organisation, the “Board of Peace”, to oversee Gaza. AP

But Trump’s objections to the TPP went beyond trade. Central to the mantra of making America great again is the belief that multilateral arrangements in international relations put the United States at a disadvantage, a situation that can only be rectified by scrapping or circumventing them through bilateral “deals”. This is the backdrop against which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese contemplates his invitation to sit on Trump’s “Board of Peace” to oversee Gaza.

At first glance, the Byzantine structure set out by the White House to address Israel’s destruction of the Gaza Strip may seem multilateral. Beneath the random assortment of world leaders invited to fill seats on his “Board of Peace” is a “founding executive board”, featuring US Secretary of State Marco Rubio as well as Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff and Tony Blair, and the “Gaza executive board”, which adds some Turkish and Qatari officials and Israeli businessman Yakir Gabay to the mix. The last of these organs will oversee the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, headed by a former Palestinian official, Ali Shaath.

But in essence we are looking at a series of shell companies, a Potemkin village designed to dress up American control in internationalist clothes. Albanese and other world leaders are being asked to choose between the current international rules-based order, with all its flaws, and a “pay to play” system run by the US.

It is of course true that the “rules-based order” has always been malleable as far as Washington is concerned, and that Trump’s abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and his threats to annex Greenland have their precedents in earlier US administrations. When White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller dismissed “international niceties” in favour of “strength … the iron laws of the world”, one was immediately reminded of the US invasion of Afghanistan, when one American academic noted that “the US has made it clear it’s not going to let the Lilliputians tie Gulliver up, and that has some of them terrified”.

When these “iron laws” are applied to countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia or the Middle East, Australia and other Western nations can assume the position of the three wise monkeys or climb onto the bandwagon. But when the US president starts belittling the sovereignty of his closest allies, and when his envoy Witkoff muses about Ukraine being “a false country … this sort of mosaic”, the danger in acquiescing to such an approach strikes closer to home.

For the Palestinians, whose claim to statehood Albanese recognised in September in the face of intense US opposition, such dangers are immediate. When Kushner talks about Gaza’s real estate potential and Shaath suggests using debris to create offshore islands, they elide the reality of Palestinians’ property rights and their loved ones still entombed in that rubble. If any Palestinian appointed to run Gaza thinks talk of prosperity can override the need for justice, they are doomed to join the ranks of history’s quislings.

There is a whole body of international law that codifies Palestinian rights, from the right to return to their homes and to self-determination as well as their right to armed struggle against a decades-long occupation that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has deemed illegal.

The choice facing Albanese and other world leaders is between this architecture – as well as the ongoing cases against Israel and its leaders being heard by the ICJ and the International Criminal Court – and a mercantilist “mafia world order” in which the US plays landlord and arbiter.

To say, as some observers have, that annexing Greenland would spell the end of NATO is to overlook the fact that Trump and his aides believe such multilateral alliances are hollow to begin with and that their European allies simply don’t have the guts to walk away.

Britain, France and Germany have so far been reluctant to take a firm line against Trump because they believe the US is indispensable to thwarting Russia’s designs in Ukraine. Albanese has continued to pile sweeteners on top of the AUKUS agreement to keep it alive.

Political and business leaders around the world, from Apple’s Tim Cook and FIFA’s Gianni Infantino to the South Korean government and Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado, have also made their offerings at the altar of Trump, an angry and capricious deity who might bless their crops or rain tariffs down on their villages or something in between, depending on the day of the week.

On Tuesday, protesters supporting the Iranian monarchy picketed the entrance to the ABC’s Southbank office in Melbourne. “Trump show your power! Now is the hour!” they chanted.

It is indeed the hour. The question is, will Albanese and other leaders of the world’s democracies show their power and push back? Or has he again called their bluff?

Maher Mughrabi is an editor and senior writer. He is a former features editor and foreign editor.

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