Board of Peace, Global Grift?
The US offers dictators a new opportunity to launder their reputations.
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Casey Michel is a journalist who writes on international corruption, foreign influence, and dark money for a range of outlets, including The New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and more. He is the author of multiple books on the subject, including the forthcoming United States of Oligarchy.
Ever since Donald Trump first announced the creation of the so-called “Board of Peace” late last year, there has been a distinct lack of clarity about what the Board is, or why it even exists. Despite being widely touted by the White House as an organization that will “play an essential role” in implementing the president’s plan for Gaza, it’s entirely unclear what the Board will actually do, or what resources it will bring to bear, or even what right it has to do anything, anywhere, in the first place.
But there is one thing we know about the Board of Peace: who it will include and the cost of entry. As The New York Times reported last month, nearly two dozen governments around the world accepted Trump’s invitation to join for a billion dollars each.
A handful of these countries are democratic US allies, such as Albania and Bulgaria. Many more, however, are outright dictatorships, rapacious regimes dedicated to pillaging their populations and destabilizing their respective regions–even to the point of committing genocide.
For instance, governments like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are both listed as charter members of the new Board of Peace. It’s difficult to overstate just how dedicated both nations have been to laundering their own reputations in recent years, from hiring legions of Western consultants and public relations specialists to bankrolling think tanks and universities. The Gulf monarchies have even transformed the broader sports industry into their own personal playthings, hosting major tournaments to cover for atrocious human rights records.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia have been at the center of numerous clandestine payment schemes bankrolling Trump and his allies—setting up new Trump resorts and real estate investments and pioneering the use of crypto to directly benefit the sitting American president. All of this, while Saudi Arabia’s Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) oversees one of the most tyrannical regimes in the world. The UAE’s Muhammad bin Zayed (MBZ), for his part, is helping Sudanese forces commit genocide.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The Board of Peace’s roster also includes countries like Kazakhstan, which remains one of Russia’s go-to spots for sanctions evasion amid Moscow’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Belarus is another charter member—despite the fact that the regime in Minsk is the Kremlin’s closest ally, and continues to serve as a springboard for Russian assaults on Kyiv.
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The list of corrupt, despotic, or otherwise anti-democratic regimes joining Trump’s Board of Peace runs on and on. Egypt’s military dictatorship has agreed to join, a natural follow-up to Cairo’s high-profile foreign influence campaigns in the US. The increasingly autocratic regime under Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey also joined, as did the decades-old Aliyev family dictatorship in Azerbaijan, recently responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh. Perhaps the least surprising member state fluffing the Board of Peace is Viktor Orban’s Hungary, which remains a model for Trump’s efforts to strangle American democracy and a key partner for the White House in opposing EU cohesion and European democracy writ large.
Indeed, the entire range of countries joining the Board of Peace is a potpourri of budding kleptocrats and established despots. It is a remarkable agglomeration of all the different forms of dictatorship: theocratic thugs in Saudi Arabia, far-right nationalists in Hungary, and far-left one-party regimes in places like Vietnam.
It is, if nothing else, a testament to the many modes of modern autocracy—and to how all of these regimes, regardless of their supposed political leanings, are dedicated solely to remaining in (and profiting from) power, however they can. Many of these regimes view the $1 billion price tag for permanent membership on the board as the cost of remaining close to Trump.
To be sure, this is hardly the first time that autocratic states have exploited international organizations, trying to take advantage of existing bodies to entrench both themselves and fellow autocrats. The United Nations remains a classic case study in this phenomenon, in which authoritarian and authoritarian-leaning governments regularly band together to protect one another’s interests behind the veneer of international legitimacy. One need only look to the Security Council, where Russia and China (and now even the United States) regularly back one another’s positions and claims.
There’s nothing wrong, of course, with launching a new organization dedicated to peace or even bodies dedicated to bringing together diffuse, diverse regimes from around the world. But by all appearances, this new Board of Peace seems dedicated to doing little more than fluffing the images of Trump and his fellow kleptocrats. In short, the Board is shaping up to intensify this dynamic rather than solve the problems of existing global forums.
If there’s any doubt, just look at those nations that have declined Trump’s invitation to join the new group.
Places like Spain, Italy, Norway, France, and the United Kingdom all turned down Trump’s offer to join, along with liberal democracies elsewhere. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, fresh from his Davos speech on the “rupture” in trans-Atlantic relations, pointedly declined Trump’s invitation—at which point Trump publicly rescinded the invite. “Please let this Letter serve to represent that the Board of Peace is withdrawing its invitation to you regarding Canada’s joining, what will be, the most prestigious Board of Leaders ever assembled, at any time,” Trump wrote.
Whatever the Board of Peace ends up as—and, as of right now, it’s anyone’s guess what direction the Board will actually go in—it’s fair to assume it will never be the “most prestigious” group of leaders “ever assembled.” It might, however, be something else: the greatest coterie of crooked leaders seen in decades, all of whom are looking at Trump not merely as one of their own, but as a source of legitimacy and support. The Board’s ignominious membership will back calls for “peace,” all while continuing to ransack their own nations, devastate democracies elsewhere, and destroy any notion of actual peace wherever they can.
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USA Condemned to failure?
Consequence in action.
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I hope that my American readers on Substack will treat this in the spirit which it intended.
The events unfolding around the 62nd Munich Security Conference are profoundly instructive, but I doubt that the Trump administration can read the signs.
Just consider what people like Carney, Merz and Macron are saying. These are serious people!
Some thoughts:
• Trump and his incredibly dishonest and incompetent team have turned nearly the entire world against America.
• This “new” America is probably considered by many readers to be the real America.
• An America that has previously been hidden from view by smarter and more duplicitous political leaders from both parties. Rubio’s speech at the conference is a perfect example of this duplicity.
• An America that has dishonestly managed to dilute the wishes of their own electorate.
Any world leadership team that does not look for new and more genuine alliances, are fools in the image of Trump.
Also consider how an ascendant China has benefitted from the incredible stupidity of Trump. I have always been pro USA and anti-China. An Americophile no more. At least for now.
I would now reluctantly throw my lot in with China rather than the incredible train wreck that Project 25 has created and unleashed on the world. Critically, I do not think that America in its present state can elect leaders and teams with the intellectual depth and gravitas of the Chinese.
I write from abroad and I passionately believe that too many Americans with their colloquialism and sense of superiority are failing to see and comprehend what is happening around them.
Minneapolis, The Trump Files. The Epstein Files. The “Cabinet.” Bondi. Kennedy. Ukraine abandoned. Election manipulation! The list is endless.
The world is watching, and alarm is shifting to contempt. Yes, contempt, because we are all realising that we can do without the USA. Why, because it now appears reckless, unserious, and increasingly irrelevant. And that may be the most dangerous consequence of all.