There is a specific, distinct flavor to the incompetence of the modern nation-state, a flavor that tastes vaguely of chalk, bureaucratic dust, and blood. France, the fading grand dame of European diplomacy, has announced with breathless self-importance that it is “mobilized” to end the conflict in Gaza. Whenever a government says it is “mobilized,” you can safely assume that absolutely nothing of consequence will happen for at least six months, and when it does, it will involve a committee meeting in a Swiss hotel with really good catering.

But let us give credit where credit is due, however microscopic that credit may be. Paris is shipping nearly 400 tonnes of food aid to Gaza. Specifically, nutritional supplements for babies. Four hundred tonnes. In the vacuum of a starving population, this is, of course, objectively better than zero tonnes. It implies that somewhere in the labyrinthine bowels of the Quai d'Orsay, someone actually looked at a spreadsheet of caloric deficits and realized that infants dying of malnutrition looks bad on the quarterly report. So, off go the crates. Pureed peas and formula, sent forth into a meat grinder with a 'From Paris with Love' sticker slapped on the side.

However, let us not pretend this is a solution. It is a gesture. It is the geopolitical equivalent of tossing a packet of wet wipes to a man who has just fallen into a sewer. France calls this being “mobilized.” I call it the bare minimum required to maintain the illusion of civilization while the world burns down around us. The French government has coupled this shipment with a sternly worded request—a "call," if you will—for Israel to lift the obstacles preventing aid from actually entering the strip. One imagines the Israeli cabinet trembling in their boots at the thought of a French press release. The naivety is almost charming, in a grotesque way. We are watching a diplomatic pantomime where one actor pretends to have influence, and the other pretends to listen, all while the audience—in this case, the civilians of Gaza—gets crushed by the falling stage scenery.

But the true pièce de résistance of this farce is not the baby food. No, the baby food is merely the tragic appetizer. The main course is the news that France is one of 60 lucky contestants invited to join Donald Trump’s upcoming “Board of Peace.”

The “Board of Peace.” Roll that phrase around on your tongue. It sounds like a shell company set up to launder money for a failed casino in Atlantic City. It sounds like a dystopian reality show where the loser gets their country annexed. It is the most American, most Trumpian branding imaginable applied to the most intractable, blood-soaked conflict of the last century. And France—the land of Voltaire, or at least the land that remembers reading Voltaire once—is apparently polishing its shoes to attend.

Consider the sheer, blinding absurdity of this assembly. You have the United States, currently oscillating between imperial decline and reality-television fascism, setting up a corporate board to solve the Middle East. And who are the board members? A gaggle of 60 nations, all presumably jostling for position to kiss the ring, hoping that if they nod enthusiastically enough at the Chairman’s incoherent ramblings, they might get a tariff exemption or a pat on the head. France’s inclusion is treated as a diplomatic victory, a sign that they are still a "player." In reality, it is an invitation to sit at the kids' table while the adults—or rather, the armed lunatics—carve up the turkey.

The juxtaposition is enough to induce a stroke. On one hand, you have 400 tonnes of nutritional paste being desperately funneled toward starving infants in a zone of total devastation. On the other, you have the leaders of the free world preparing to sit in a gold-plated boardroom to discuss "Peace" as if it were a branding acquisition deal or a golf course expansion. The babies get formula; the politicians get a photo op with the Orange Emperor. It is a perfect closed loop of futility.

This is why I despise the performative morality of the West. They treat humanitarian aid not as a duty, but as an alibi. By sending the food, they purchase the moral license to participate in the charade of the "Board of Peace." They can point to the crates of formula and say, “See? We care. We are mobilized.” Meanwhile, the machinery of war grinds on, lubricated by the very diplomatic channels that are supposed to stop it. The French remain mobilized, the Americans remain delusional, and the babies remain hungry, waiting for the Board to adjourn.