The annual Davos pilgrimage—that high-altitude circle-jerk where the world’s most expensive suits gather to pretend they care about the peasants they’re actively disenfranchising—has finally produced its piece de resistance. Donald Trump, a man whose understanding of ‘peace’ usually involves a non-disclosure agreement and a wire transfer, has unveiled his ‘Board of Peace.’ It is, ostensibly, a mechanism to oversee a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict. In reality, it is the ultimate rebranding of global hegemony as a luxury subscription service, and the world is predictably falling for the grift.

Let’s look at the mechanics of this absurdity. Trump has invited some 60 countries to join this illustrious board, including such legendary paragons of pacifism as Russia and China. It’s a stroke of cynical genius. By inviting the very entities that the ‘rules-based international order’ supposedly exists to constrain, Trump has effectively declared that the rules are officially for sale to the highest bidder. The Left will spend the next forty-eight hours vibrating with performative outrage, screaming about the death of democracy while they nurse their artisanal lattes. Meanwhile, the Right will hail this as the greatest diplomatic masterstroke since the Louisiana Purchase, oblivious to the fact that they are cheering for a globalist entity that makes the World Economic Forum look like a local PTA meeting.

Both sides are, as usual, missing the point. The Board of Peace isn’t about peace; it’s about the final, gasping realization that the United Nations is a rotting corpse in a glass building on the East River. For decades, the UN has been a theatrical troupe of paper-pushers specializing in strongly-worded letters and the occasional sex scandal. Trump, ever the shark sensing blood in the water, has decided to replace this expensive mausoleum with a sleeker, more transactional model. Why bother with the pretense of international law when you can just have a ‘Board of Directors’? It’s geopolitics reimagined as a leveraged buyout.

The inclusion of Israel as an early signatory is perhaps the most predictable beat in this tragicomedy. When your house is on fire and the local fire department is busy arguing over the color of the trucks, you don’t ask if the man offering you a bucket of water is actually an arsonist looking for a kickback. You sign the paper. But the broader invitation to 60 countries reveals the true ambition here: a total bypass of any institution that requires more than a handshake and a photo op to function. It is the ‘Art of the Deal’ applied to a planet that is increasingly resembling a clearance sale at a bankrupt department store.

Think about the historical parallels, if you have the intellectual stamina to do so. We are witnessing a return to the 19th-century Concert of Europe, but instead of Metternich and Castlereagh, we have a collection of populist strongmen and technocratic vultures. The goal is the same: stability at the cost of every principle you pretend to hold dear. The UN was built on the naive, post-WWII delusion that humanity could learn from its mistakes. The Board of Peace is built on the far more realistic, albeit soul-crushing, premise that humanity is a collection of competing interests that can be managed if the right people are given a seat at the table and a cut of the profits.

The ‘Board of Peace’ title itself is a masterclass in Orwellian marketing. It is the kind of name you give a private security firm that specializes in ‘liquidating’ dissent. Yet, the global community is lining up. Why? Because the alternative is the terrifying realization that no one is actually in charge. We crave the strongman, the board, the committee—any entity that promises to handle the messy business of survival so we can go back to arguing about TikTok filters and stock buybacks.

Russia and China’s potential involvement is the final, acid-drenched cherry on top. It’s a tacit admission that the Cold War never ended; it just went through a corporate merger. By bringing them into the ‘Board,’ Trump isn’t creating peace; he’s creating a cartel. A cartel of power that ensures the borders stay where they are, the oil keeps flowing, and the plebeians stay distracted by the latest shiny object. It is a world where ‘peace’ is simply the absence of any conflict that might hurt the quarterly earnings of the military-industrial complex.

So, welcome to the new world order. It looks exactly like the old one, but with more gold leaf and fewer committees and fewer pretenses about human rights. The Board of Peace is the perfect monument to our era: a hollow, transactional, and deeply cynical structure designed by a man who views the world as a series of branding opportunities. We deserve nothing less. We have traded the messy, failed ideal of global cooperation for a seat on a board that will eventually vote to dissolve us. But at least the press releases will be spectacular.