Trump wants peace board to rewrite global order—but major powers aren’t sold

Russia and China haven’t accepted Trump’s invitation, and even longtime U.S. allies the U.K. and France say they are reluctant, worried about joining an organization subject to Trump’s whims that could give equal status to authoritarians such as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump presided over a signing ceremony for the board’s charter Thursday in Davos, Switzerland, joined on stage by leaders from Argentina, Hungary, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and 14 other countries.

“Once this board is completely formed, we can do pretty much whatever we want," Trump said, adding “we’ll do it in conjunction with the United Nations."

British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told the BBC on Thursday that the U.K. wouldn’t be signing on to the board for now, in part because of concerns over the potential involvement of Putin. She said the U.K. wanted to support the peace plan for Gaza but the board was a “legal treaty that raises much broader issues."

To the holdouts, the board is a new international club built alarmingly around Trump, without the protections of the U.N. For the countries that have joined, it is a chance for access to Trump and a bigger, albeit still supporting, diplomatic role.

“This is a global Mar-a-Lago," Nicholas Westcott, a professor at the University of London and a former senior British diplomat, said of the countries rushing to join the Board of Peace. “That’s exactly the kind of world Trump wants, where everybody’s coming to his club for some crumbs from the great man’s table."

China, Russia, France and Britain’s wariness about the organization stems from concern over coming under Trump’s control in a way that they aren’t as permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, where each has a veto, analysts said. Many other smaller countries that see the U.N. as the main international forum where they can exercise influence are at least as dubious.

The board was created to oversee the reconstruction of postwar Gaza. But its charter, which was drafted by the White House, says the board’s goal is “to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict."

It also requires countries seeking permanent seats to commit to a $1 billion payment to fund the board’s activities. Nothing in the charter confines its operations to Gaza.

The unusual terms underscore that the board is part of Trump’s multi-front push in his second term to replace the post-World War II international order with a new architecture that is directly under his control and whose work may go well beyond Gaza.

“It’s going to get a lot of work done that the United Nations should have done," Trump told reporters in Davos, defending his decision to offer a seat to Putin. “Yeah, I have some controversial people on it, but these are people who get things done."

Trump said Wednesday that Putin had accepted an invitation to the board, but the Kremlin has said only that it was considering the invitation.

In a sign that Russia may seek to use its decision on joining as leverage, Putin said Thursday that the Kremlin is ready to contribute $1 billion to the Board of Peace if it could draw on frozen Russian assets, according to the Russian state news agency TASS. “We have already discussed such options with representatives of the American administration," Putin said.

Invitations to foreign governments to join the board went out less than a month after Trump ordered unilateral military action to remove Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, saying he would be controlling the country and its oil reserves. It also coincided with his escalating dispute with Europe over an attempted U.S. takeover of Greenland from Denmark.

For most governments, the decision on whether to join the new organization comes down to a calculation about whether they can secure more benefits for themselves on the inside or on the outside.

Notably absent from the roster of participating countries are European governments, with the exception of Hungary and a few others. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had been asked to join the board, but had reservations about joining if Putin also became a member.

For Europeans, a decision about joining the organization is a difficult one, especially if Trump uses the forum to pursue a peace agreement to settle the Ukraine war, said Westcott.

“The big dilemma for Europeans is if Trump wants to use it to start discussing Ukraine and they’re not there, it is a carve up between Trump and Putin, which is the way both of them like to see the world. You have some bits of Europe and I’ll have the other bits," he said.

One of the only foreign leaders to publicly reject the U.S. invitation was Slovenia’s Prime Minister Robert Golob, who told a local news outlet he had declined because the board “dangerously interferes with the broader international order."

With few staff, no authorization under international law to intervene except in Gaza and none of the legitimacy the U.N. enjoys, the board is unlikely to last beyond Trump’s presidency, even if he does remain as chairman after leaving office, analysts say.

The board has “no mandate, no practical way of functioning and no governing principles that might attract heavyweights," said Aaron David Miller, a former senior State Department official now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The obstacles will make it hard to gain traction."

Past U.S. presidents have also bemoaned the U.N.’s shortcomings, taken unilateral military action in violation of the world body’s charter, slashed the U.S. contribution to its budget, and sometimes used their veto in the Security Council to block multilateral peace initiatives.

But few have matched Trump’s sidelining of the U.N., an institution the U.S. helped establish to prevent wars and has defended for decades, despite its shortcomings.

The Security Council voted unanimously in November, with Russia and China abstaining, to back Trump’s Gaza cease-fire plan, saying it “welcomed" the Board of Peace’s involvement. U.N. officials have voiced increasing alarm as Trump’s plans to expand its mandate have taken shape.

Write to David S. Cloud at david.cloud@wsj.com and Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com