As 60 nations across the world, including India, China, Russia and Pakistan, huddle and anxiously ponder over President Donald Trump’s offer to join the ‘Board of Peace’ (BOP) plan, they will be perturbed by many more other things than what the irrepressible political strategist Henry Kissinger said: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
The BOP is one of the four tiers set up by the US to handle Gaza’s transition and the reconstruction after the conflict that has destroyed 80 per cent of the city’s buildings and left about 20 lakh of its residents living in tents amid a scenario of food scarcity and non-existent healthcare.
One may have an arguable proposition in deciding which one is worse—to be US’ friend or its ally—but there would be no argument in the fact that the BOP plan is a Trumpian effort to dismantle the UN Security Council and extend US hegemony thereafter.
The BOP has its origins in the UNSC resolution 2803 (2025) that authorses an international stabilisation force to oversee the October 2025 Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
But there are several key departures that it makes from the UNSC’s mandate that make it look more like Trump’s personal plan to broaden the authorised UNSC mandate with the aim of extending America’s hegemony.
A widely circulated draft charter of the BOP defines it as “an international organisation that seeks to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict”.
Without mentioning Gaza, the draft adds, “Durable peace requires pragmatic judgment, common sense solutions, and the courage to depart from approaches and institutions that have too often failed.”
These allusions imply that the BOP is being readied as a model conflict resolution body that will be raised on parallel lines to the UNSC with the same aims and objectives. And of course, with Trump’s aversion to the UN being well-known, the BOP is being designed in a way that it can stand to replace the UNSC.
The initial list of 11 BOP members, which includes Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, does not include any Palestinians, which has sparked outrage.
The UNSC resolution gives the conflict resolution authorisation to the BOP for two years until December 31, 2027. But the BOP draft charter has given its members a tenure of three years, with the option of renewal if members pay up $1 billion.
Significantly, Trump has appointed himself as the BOP chairperson; he will have the absolute power to veto any decision made by majority vote. So the final world will be that of the US President. In a way, the BOP may well be a harbinger of the end of multilateralism and signal the triumph and beginning of unhindered unilateralism.
