Trump’s Board of Peace: An Alternative to Postwar Order?
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By Khaled Emam | February 2026
Trump’s Board of Peace emerges against a backdrop of widening debate and mounting uncertainty within the international system over whether the post-1945 model of institution-based peace making continues to command practical authority. Established outside traditional treaty frameworks yet supported by substantial political and financial commitments, the initiative reflects a growing willingness among states, shaped in part by frustration with the limitations of the existing institutional status quo, to explore mechanisms that privilege decisiveness and centralized authority over procedural consensus.
The Board of Peace, initially presented as a mechanism to oversee stabilization and reconstruction in Gaza, appears less a conventional peace making initiative than an experiment in global governance. Its structure rests not on the postwar order of treaty-based institutions, the liberal international order, or collective authorization, but on concentrated executive authority of the US administration. The central question, therefore, is not simply whether the Board succeeds in Gaza—the purpose for which it was created—but whether it signals the emergence of a model centered on concentrated executive authority of President Trump to “getting things done” at a time when traditional multilateral institutions are widely viewed as slow and inadequate.
On February 19, representatives of roughly 40 countries gathered in Washington at the United States Institute of Peace for the inaugural meeting of President Donald Trump’s newly established Board of Peace. The United States pledged $10 billion to the initiative, followed by approximately $7 billion in additional commitments from nine countries, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Kuwait. The display conveyed momentum. Yet beneath the formal support lay a more political reality: for many countries, participation appeared driven less by confidence in the Board’s mission or its potential impact than by the desire to maintain proximity to Washington and by the calculation of engaging an administration that has demonstrated both the willingness and the capacity to act outside established multilateral frameworks, positioning itself as the only viable alternative for handling complex crises such as Gaza, where multilateral institutions have often been perceived as weak and insufficiently taken seriously by powerful states.
The Board of Peace is not unprecedented because of its mission or its stated goal of achieving “peace,” as President Trump put it: “What we’re doing is very simple, peace.” International actors have long created mechanisms to manage ceasefires, reconstruction, and political transitions—from the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia to the African Union Mission in Somalia, the Iraq Reconstruction Fund Facility, the United Nations Mission in Liberia, and the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo. What distinguishes the Board is therefore not the ambition to mobilize political and financial support for post-conflict stabilization, but its structure and mandate.
On September 29, 2025, President Trump introduced the Board of Peace as part of his 20-point Gaza peace plan announced alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The proposal envisioned a new international transitional body tasked with overseeing and supervising the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), responsible for implementing the plan on the ground. Crucially, the statement specified that the Board would be headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump, with additional heads of state to be announced at a later stage.
The initiative subsequently received international endorsement. On November 17, 2025, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2803, welcoming the establishment of the Board of Peace as a transitional administration with international legal personality and mandating it to coordinate funding and implementation efforts consistent with relevant international legal principles until the Palestinian Authority completed its reform program. The resolution passed with the approval of thirteen member states, including the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, while China and Russia abstained.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 22, 2026, President Trump formally ratified the Board’s charter, announcing its establishment as an official international organization. Yet the charter introduced a governance structure that departed in important respects from traditional institutional practice. Trump was designated chairman in his personal capacity rather than in his role as President of the United States, allowing him to retain leadership beyond his presidential term unless removed by an executive board whose members he himself appoints and may dismiss.
Under the charter, the chair holds authority to admit or remove members, define operational priorities, allocate funds, and determine the Board’s direction, while states may secure permanent membership through a financial contribution of $1 billion. Although participation formally involves member states, decision-making authority ultimately remains centralized in the office of the chairman.
This governance model differs sharply from the Board of Peace framework referenced in United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803. Although the resolution framed the Board as a transitional authority focused specifically on Gaza and authorized on a temporary basis through December 31, 2027, it also called upon Member States and international organizations to contribute personnel, equipment, and financial resources while requesting regular written progress reports to the Security Council every six months. The charter establishing the Board, however, contains no comparable reporting obligation or formal institutional linkage to the Council.
President Trump suggested an even broader institutional ambition at the Board’s inaugural meeting, stating that the organization would “almost be looking over the United Nations and making sure it runs properly.” Such statements underscore the extent to which the initiative departs from established models of international governance. The Security Council, despite its political constraints, operates through collective authorization grounded in the UN Charter. International financial institutions similarly embed authority within structured voting arrangements, while peacekeeping missions derive legitimacy from clearly defined mandates, treaty frameworks, and institutional oversight mechanisms.
By contrast, the Board of Peace is not treaty-based and centralizes authority in the office of its chairman. Even where the charter provides for majority voting among member states, Article 3.1(e) stipulates that decisions are subject to the approval of the chairman, effectively granting veto authority over collective outcomes. Participation may therefore appear multilateral in form, but final decision-making authority remains concentrated.
The deeper question concerns trajectory. The post-1945 international order rested on the premise that legitimacy flows from collective authorization among nation states and that international institutions endure beyond individual officeholders. The Board of Peace tests an alternative proposition: that concentrated executive authority, backed by substantial political and financial leverage, may produce comparable outcomes without embedding itself within traditional multilateral institutions.
The current fragmentation and weakening of the international order has given President Trump a strategic opening: an opportunity to present himself to the American public and the world as the only leader capable of filling the vacuum and getting things done.
The design of the Board of Peace does not represent a complete withdrawal from traditional international cooperation mechanisms. Rather, it signals experimentation with an alternative form of governance centered on great-power primacy and concentrated political authority. Such a structure may offer certain advantages, including the capacity to make swift decisions, reduce negotiation gridlock, rapidly mobilize resources, and challenge institutional inertia—an approach President Trump has consistently favored.
Efficiency, however, carries trade-offs. Legitimacy in post-conflict settings depends not only on material capacity and resource mobilization, but also on perceived neutrality, the ability to hear competing grievances, and sustained respect for local political realities—areas in which external powers, including successive U.S. administrations, have historically struggled to build durable trust among Palestinian populations. The Board therefore places performance at the center of its claim to legitimacy.
At the Board’s inaugural meeting, President Trump also emphasized a conception of peace tied to decisive leadership and the willingness to employ or signal coercive leverage where necessary, reinforcing the extent to which the initiative departs from traditional mediation models grounded primarily in institutional neutrality.
Although initially framed as a framework to oversee stabilization and reconstruction in Gaza following the October 2025 ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel, the initiative’s ambitions expanded rapidly. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, President Trump described the Board not merely as a regional arrangement but as a platform capable of addressing conflicts beyond Gaza, suggesting that the model could serve as a standing mechanism for resolving disputes long considered intractable. In doing so, the Board institutionalizes a leadership-driven approach to diplomacy operating alongside—and at times outside—traditional United Nations channels.
The broader appeal of such an approach reflects a moment of fragmentation within the international order itself. As multilateral institutions struggle to generate timely political outcomes, centralized authority backed by economic and military leverage may appear increasingly attractive to states seeking decisive conflict management. Gaza has therefore emerged as the Board’s immediate and decisive test case. Whether the initiative becomes transformative or marginal will depend less on its formal legality or institutional design than on its ability to deliver tangible stabilization and political settlement under exceptionally difficult conditions.
If the Board succeeds in producing durable outcomes in Gaza, it may acquire a degree of practical legitimacy capable of compensating for its structural novelty. Failure, by contrast, would reinforce the continuing necessity of institutional multilateralism despite its limitations. Other conflict theaters will be watching closely.
Author
Khaled Emam is the CEO of the Arab Leadership Institute (ALI), human rights lawyer and expert in global governance, international criminal justice, and peacebuilding. He is currently a teaching Fellow at the Harvard University. He has advised the United Nations, national governments, and international organizations on issues of peacebuilding and democratic governance. Khaled lectures on politics, peace, and democracy in the Middle East at academic institutions, global summits, and policy forums.
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To cite this article, use the following reference: Emam, Khaled. (February, 2026). Trump's Board of Peace: A New Model for Peace or a One-Off Initiative. Council on International Law, Order, and Security (CILOS).
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