Chapter 1: What is the Board of Peace and its purpose?
Well, this is a very exciting day. Long in the making. And many countries have just received their notice and everybody wants to be a part of it.
In the announcement at Davos of who's joining the president's new initiative.
The Board of Peace.
It was clear that everybody did not want to be a part of it. No France, no UK, but Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, El Salvador. Trump talked a lot about conflict.
But they have to give up their weapons, and if they don't do that, it's going to be the end of them. And in Nigeria, we're annihilating terrorists who are killing Christians.
Though he had some nice moments.
I think it's going to happen. To end decades of suffering, stop generations of hatred and bloodshed, and forge a beautiful, everlasting, and glorious peace.
So what is Trump's Board of Peace? Timu Yuen? A money grab? Something that he's going to ditch when he gets embarrassed by the takers? I'm so sorry, Azerbaijan. Or is it part of a bold plan to remake a troubled world? That's ahead on Today Explained. You're listening to Today Explained.
Paul Beckett, senior editor at The Atlantic.
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Chapter 2: How do countries join Trump's Board of Peace?
I don't find them up here. I like every one of these people. That would include Argentina. He's obviously very close to Javier Millet. Belarus, Moscow's closest ally. Egypt, which is run by the man that Trump once called his favorite dictator. Hungary, which is...
run by Viktor Orban, a fellow traveler in Trump's type of right-wing politics, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. So they have accepted. A bunch more have been invited and are, let's just say, mulling it over. Canada was invited but has already been uninvited because of what Prime Minister Carney said at Davos last week.
Every day. We're reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must.
So that seems to have gone down quite badly and he's now had his invitation rescinded.
Booth Social. Dear Prime Minister Carney, 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. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Vladimir Putin has been invited. So probably prospects of the Board of Peace ever working on Ukraine may be slim or not. But he hasn't said whether he'll join yet.
You got to pay a billion dollars. You or your government has to pay a billion dollars. No small fee. What do the people joining the Board of Peace get out of this?
Proximity to Donald J. Trump, I think, is probably the simplest thing. They will have a say in world affairs if this takes off. So if you're a very small country and if you can afford it, you know, you will have a hand in voting and steering post-conflict efforts around the world. If... It all comes to pass. It's hard to envisage how it will work from just reading the charter.
So a huge amount of this has yet to be decided or at least elaborated on.
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Chapter 3: What are the financial implications of joining the Board of Peace?
what the accountability mechanisms here, what the transparency is, where does the money go? They just said, well, put the money in reputable banks. It's like, okay. And the other thing here that I think could get complicated is this isn't a United States exercise. This is a Trump exercise. Nowhere does it say that he has to step down when he starts being president.
In fact, in the charter, he's the only named person.
Donald J. Trump shall serve as inaugural chairman of the Board of Peace, and he shall separately serve as inaugural representative of the United States of America.
So in theory, after he leaves office, he will stay as chairman and then invite his successor, or not, because he gets to make the invitations. He will be in a position to invite the president of the United States to serve on this board.
So it just gets very complicated when you stop dealing with an institution and start dealing with a private members club so closely associated with a private citizen.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I want to bring this back to Gaza because those renderings that you mentioned, they are remarkable, right? They show a developed Gaza skyline, tall buildings, all the things you associate with Donald Trump. If the stated purpose right now is we're going to help rebuild Gaza and you've got a bunch of real estate guys involved, where do you think that may be headed?
I think... The billion dollars that countries pay for that permanent seat is designed to provide funds for the reconstruction of Gaza. And so, good thing. I think the question then is, okay, but who gets contracts? How is it decided?
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Chapter 4: Who has been invited to join the Board of Peace?
Hear your first this year with Shopify by your side. Today, this world is on fire.
Today Explained, I'm Noelle King with Monica Duffy Toft. She's a professor of international politics at Tufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and director of the Center for Strategic Studies. All right, so it is unbelievably, Monica, still January of 2026, and we have had really significant events in Venezuela, in Greenland or over Greenland, with the EU and NATO.
And all of this is leading people to say President Donald Trump is trying to remake the world order. What is the world order?
So the world order was established after World War II.
Far into the night, the happy crowd screamed their relief at the end of the greatest war in history.
I'm Kenneth Callum from Arizona. This is the happiest day of my life.
We want peace and prosperity for the world as a whole.
And so the United States and its Western allies decided to establish rules that would govern the international system. And along with that, a series of institutions, including, by the way, the United Nations.
These representatives of 50 nations, they have made a beginning, a brave beginning that can build a mighty structure for peace.
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Chapter 5: What criticisms are being raised about the Board of Peace?
You're in and out quickly. But over the longer term, it's eroding, first of all, the American reputation. And over the longer term, It's actually undermining our interests. What you're going to see is a balancing against the United States. You're already seeing the hedging. You're already seeing that. We've got Mark Carney of Canada declaring.
We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn't mourn it.
We are in a new world order and we cannot rely on our allies. We cannot rely on the United States. And he's not alone.
You said the United States is using force. And I wonder to what degree you think that's true. So Venezuela, yes, we did go in. It was a... It was a quick mission. I think we could put it that way. Greenland, we did not actually do anything, nor did we even end up levying tariffs on Europe over the whole Greenland fight. President Trump backed off.
So when you say we're using force, how do you see that? Is it is it you're not talking boots on the ground, right? Potentially.
I mean, the Trump administration did say under with the Greenland operation before it de-escalated, thankfully. that they wouldn't discount putting American forces in there and reestablishing those bases.
After the war, we gave Greenland back to Denmark. How stupid were we to do that?
I wasn't fully confident that the U.S. wasn't going to deploy troops. And I'm pretty sure the Europeans, they feared that the U.S. was going to take that step. We love sanctions. And now Trump loves tariffs. And we're using them not only against adversaries, but against allies. Noel, that's the difference, right, is that we're threatening our allies.
And because the United States is so quick with the trigger, we can't be trusted that we're not going to use force.
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Chapter 6: How does the Board of Peace relate to the United Nations?
The United States is now not a reliable partner. And of course, they feel as if they're fighting for that Western liberal order and that Ukraine is the front line. And then the adversaries, the Russian Federation and China, what lessons are they taking from this?
China, I think, is sort of, you know, under President Xi, is kind of thumping his chest and saying, I'm the big boy in the room, right? We're stable. We're not going to use force, right? And then Putin is looking at this smirking, thinking, great, if the United States can get away with these shenanigans, then I can too, right? So I think we're in kind of a Wild West situation.
And the question is, how are they going to respond to it?
Monica Duffy Toft of the Tufts Fletcher School. Peter Balanon-Rosen produced today's show. Jolie Myers edited. Bridger Dunnigan and David Tadishore engineered. And Andrea Lopez-Crusado checked the facts. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained.