Just monitoring early comments about the ‘Board of Peace’ which President Trump unveiled at Davos 2026, and who invited Putin to join. Trump is the Gatekeeper.
Here is an extract from a Substack musing by Michael D Sellers:
Now the immediate swirl has eased just enough to do what I try to do here: slow down, do a deep dive, read the governing documents, map the structure, and separate what this is claimed to be from what it is actually built to do.
What follows is a Deeper Look at Trump’s Board of Peace: what it purports to be, how it’s set up, who’s in and out as of Davos, and the questions the charter itself raises—before you even get to the politics.
1) What it purports to be
In public messaging, the Board of Peace is being sold as a mechanism to lock in and operationalize “Phase Two” of Trump’s Gaza plan: demilitarization, technocratic governance, and reconstruction—while also positioning the Board as a template that could scale beyond Gaza into a broader conflict-resolution body.
Trump himself has leaned into the “expandable” concept (“start with Gaza and then do conflicts as they arise”), and at Davos he framed it as something that can “spread out to other things as we succeed with Gaza.”
At Davos, the Trump administration’s line also shifted slightly from “this might replace the UN” to “we’ll work with many others, including the United Nations,” after earlier comments sparked alarm.
That’s the pitch: a high-prestige, action-oriented body, supposedly designed to do what existing institutions can’t—or won’t.
2) What the charter actually builds
If you read the charter (the actual governing instrument attached to invitations), you immediately notice something that feels almost like a tell:
It does not mention Gaza.
That’s not a minor drafting quirk. Gaza is the political rationale used to sell the Board. But the document is written as a general-purpose institution—one that could outlive and outgrow the Gaza mission. And notably, the Times of Israel reporting flags that while a UN Security Council mandate approved in November is described as limited to Gaza and only until the end of 2027, the charter itself is broader.
Now look at the structural features:
A) Membership is time-limited… unless you can write a $1 billion check
The charter states that member states serve no more than three years, renewable by the Chairman = i.e. Trump. But that term limit “shall not apply” to states that contribute more than $1,000,000,000 in cash within the first year of entry into force.
That is, in plain English: there is a formal path to quasi-permanent membership by paying a very large sum—while everyone else remains on a renewable lease, controlled at the top.
B) The Chairman isn’t first among equals; the Chairman is the gate
Decision-making is majority-based only up to a point: decisions are subject to the approval of the Chairman, who can also vote to break ties.
The charter also makes the Chairman the final authority on interpretation of the charter itself.
And it authorizes the Chairman, acting on behalf of the Board, to adopt resolutions or directives to implement the mission.
If you’re trying to understand the Board’s DNA, it’s here: this isn’t a neutral multilateral body with diffuse authority. It’s an institution designed for centralized control by a Chairman who basically has a final say on anything important.
C) The charter contemplates privileges and immunities
The charter provides for privileges and immunities “necessary for the exercise of functions,” to be established via agreements with host states or other measures consistent with domestic law.
That’s a familiar feature of international organizations—but combined with the governance model above, it’s exactly the kind of clause that will make legal ministries in allied capitals sit up straight.
3) The executive cast (and the Gaza machinery beneath it)
On the U.S. side, the Board’s “founding” executive layer includes a mix of state officials and private-sector heavyweights—Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Tony Blair, Ajay Banga, Marc Rowan, plus a Trump adviser—depending on the reporting.
Reuters also reported an 11-member “Gaza Executive Board” supporting the technocratic governance concept, naming figures including Turkey’s foreign minister, the UN’s Middle East coordinator Sigrid Kaag, UAE’s international cooperation minister, and others.
And Reuters has described criticism that the arrangement resembles a colonial structure, while also noting that the early list did not include any Palestinians.
At Davos, the Board was framed as oversight for a technocratic Gaza administration committee (the NCAG), and the “High Representative for Gaza” role has now been publicly attached to Bulgarian diplomat Nikolay Mladenov, per Reuters’ Albania/Bulgaria story.
4) Who’s in, who’s out (as of Davos)
A key point: this has taken shape fast, but unevenly.
The “yes” list is Middle East–heavy, plus a scattering of smaller states
Multiple reports describe participation from Gulf and regional states (and a joint statement from several foreign ministers) as well as sign-ons from a range of other countries.
In Europe, Reuters reports Albania and Bulgaria joining, and notes that Bulgaria and Hungary are the only EU members that have joined so far. Kosovo has joined as well.
Major European allies are conspicuously absent
Observers noted a “notable lack” of Western European leaders on stage with Trump in Davos.
The UK has explicitly declined to sign, with Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper citing concerns about Russian involvement and the fact that this is a “legal treaty” raising broader issues.
The Putin problem (and the credibility problem)
This might be the single cleanest early diagnostic:
Trump said at Davos that Putin had accepted an invitation. The Kremlin immediately contradicted that, saying Russia is still seeking clarifications and “studying” it.
Whether Putin ultimately joins matters less than the fact that the question exists at all—and that it became an immediate reason for Western democracies to hold back.
Canada: invited, cautious, then uninvited
Canada’s Mark Carney publicly signaled openness “in principle” while flagging governance and decision-making concerns. Within days, Trump publicly withdrew the invitation.
Whatever you think of Carney, the episode tells you something important: membership is being treated as leverage and signaling, not merely coalition-building.
5) The real questions the charter forces us to ask
You don’t need a conspiracy theory here. The document itself gives you the analytical frame.
Is this a Gaza mechanism—or a new model of international authority?
When a charter doesn’t mention the war it’s supposedly designed to manage, it’s worth asking if Gaza is the proof-of-concept for something larger.
Is “peace” the brand, and centralized dealmaking the operating system?
A structure where membership is invite-based, renewable by the Chairman, decisions require Chairman approval, and permanence can be purchased for $1 billion is not an accident of drafting.
Who is represented—and who is being “administered”?
Reuters highlighted that early member lists did not include Palestinians even as the Board is framed as supervising a transitional governance structure for Palestinian territory.
Why are financiers embedded at the top?
Whatever your politics, this is unusual: a peace-and-governance body with private equity and development finance figures integrated into the founding executive layer.
That might be defensible as “reconstruction realism.” It also might be the clearest sign that this is being designed as a capital-and-security project more than a rights-and-sovereignty project.
6) What to watch next
A few near-term tells that will clarify what the Board is becoming:
Whether major democracies continue to stay out (UK already has) and whether others publicly cite the charter’s governance model.
Whether Russia actually joins—or uses the $1B “permanent seat” concept as a bargaining chip amid frozen assets and sanctions politics.
Whether the Board begins to speak and act beyond Gaza in concrete ways (appointments, “directives,” resolutions).
Whether the UN and key capitals treat this as complementary… or as a rival institution in embryo.
A note on tone
I’m skeptical. Anyone paying attention should be.
But skepticism isn’t enough. This is a formal structure with a charter, membership terms, and an explicit theory of authority—and it’s being rolled out at Davos with the U.S. President as the Chairman.
Just as a contrast to the above, here is the International Peace Charter:
The International Peace Charter
The text below is the formal, adoptable version of the International Peace Charter. It translates our public-facing principles into clear, legally actionable commitments that governments and institutions can endorse, implement, and measure. It is designed to complement existing international law, align with domestic frameworks, and provide a common standard for cooperation, accountability, and peaceful conflict resolution.
Declare Peace
Commit to the cessation of military conflicts by ending all forms of military conflict and to renouncing war, armed conflict, and all forms of organized violence as tools of policy, and to cultivating nonviolence, cooperation, and mutual respect across nations and communities.
Dialogue
Commit to resolving disputes through peaceful dialogue, backed by professional mediation, reconciliation, and early-warning systems, so tensions de-escalate and conflicts transition into durable peace.
Disarm for Humanity
Commit to the progressive reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear and conventional weapons, end the profit motive in the arms trade, and redirect resources toward education, health, and human development.
Redefine Military Purpose
Commit to limiting militaries to defense, civilian protection, and lawful peacekeeping, and to prohibiting offensive operations or foreign intervention that undermine stability.
Respect Sovereignty
Commit to respecting territorial integrity under international law while upholding peoples’ right to pursue self-determination peacefully, democratically, and without external coercion.
Protect Humanity
Commit to ending discrimination and group-based exclusion; protect cultural, ethnic, racial, gender, and religious diversity and equal rights, recognizing inclusion and dignity as foundations of lasting peace.
Fair Justice
Commit to fair, impartial justice at local, national, and international levels – including the ICC – and to transitional-justice processes that deliver truth, accountability, reconciliation, and healing
Defend Truth
Commit to safeguarding the information commons by countering disinformation, incitement, and hate speech, while protecting free expression and expanding access to reliable, independent information.
Environmental Peace
Commit to preventing conflict by addressing climate risks, resource scarcity, and ecological degradation, and by ensuring fair access to land, water, food, and energy for all.
Collective Harmony
Commit to promoting meditation in public institutions and communities to enhance well-being, reduce stress and violence, and strengthen collective harmony.
Heal & Rebuild
Commit to healing the wounds of violence through truth-telling, reparations, trauma-informed support, and community reconciliation, restoring trust and social bonds for future peace.
The Trump Project 2025 has moved up a gear in 2026 and we are certainly witnessing a ‘no going back’ historical and painful period for this fragile and still beautiful Planet.
25th Jan 2026
Phillips P O’Brien, on Substack, has analysed the Charter for the ‘Board of Peace’. Here is an extract:
Trump’s Board of Peace (signing picture above) is in some ways the pinnacle of Trump’s foreign policy making. It is a board which has no oversight or real purpose beyond spreading around money, and it is a board that he controls completely. Here is the list of signatories who appeared with Trump at his signing event in Davos.
Isa bin Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, minister of the prime minister’s court, Bahrain
Nasser Bourita, minister of foreign affairs, Morocco
Javier Milei, president, Argentina
Nikol Pashinyan, prime minister, Armenia
Ilham Aliyev, President, Azerbaijan
Rosen Zhelyazkov, prime minister, Bulgaria
Viktor Orban, prime minister, Hungary
Prabowo Subianto, president, Indonesia
Ayman Al Safadi, minister of foreign affairs, Jordan
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, president, Kazakhstan
Vjosa Osmani-Sadriu, president, Kosovo
Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, prime minister, Pakistan
Santiago Peña, president, Paraguay
Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, prime minister, Qatar
Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, minister of foreign affairs, Saudi Arabia
Hakan Fidan, minister of foreign affairs, Turkey
Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak, special envoy to the U.S. for the UAE
Shavkat Mirziyoyev, president, Uzbekistan
Gombojavyn Zandanshatar, prime minister, Mongolia
And, of course, Putin has been invited to join, an offer which the Russians have taken up with gusto. European democracies, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, etc have mostly given the board a wide birth.
Though the Board was originally conceived up as part of the reconstruction/looting of Gaza, it seems a far greater construct now,; an entirely new international body. However its purpose is very different from all others. It is, as explicitly designed, a body to allow its chairman to have total control over tens, maybe hundreds of billions of dollars. Here is an article laying out its structure. In a nutshell, the chairman rules and everyone else pays. Here are some of my favorite bits from the founding charter. And remember, that Donald Trump is the chairman.
First—the chairman chooses all the members of the board.
Article 2.1: Member States Membership in the Board of Peace is limited to States invited to participate by the Chairman, and commences upon notification that the State has consented to be bound by this Charter, in accordance with Chapter XI.
The chairman then gets paid. Once the chairman invites a member, how do they become a member? They do so by paying the princely sum of $1billion every three years into the funds controlled entirely by the chairman.
(c) Each Member State shall serve a term of no more than three years from this Charter’s entry into force, subject to renewal by the Chairman. The three-year membership term shall not apply to Member States that contribute more than USD $1,000,000,000 in cash funds to the Board of Peace within the first year of the Charter’s entry into force.
And once a member, all states are operating at the whims of the chairman.
The Board of Peace shall convene voting meetings at least annually and at such additional times and locations as the Chairman deems appropriate. The agenda at such meetings shall be set by the Executive Board, subject to notice and comment by Member States and approval by the Chairman.
Btw, not only does the chairman schedule all meetings, the chairman has what looks like total veto power over all decisions. All decisions require the “approval” of the chairman to become official—see emphasis added below.
Decisions shall be made by a majority of the Member States present and voting, subject to the approval of the Chairman, who may also cast a vote in his capacity as Chairman in the event of a tie.
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
borderslynn 
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