“Sometimes you need a dictator,” offhandedly remarked President Trump in Davos on Jan. 21, the third day of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting. Out of his many controversial statements uttered at the forum—such as repeated references to Greenland as Iceland—perhaps this statement went undetected to many. Or perhaps it was interpreted as another one of his unorthodox jokes. Yet the timing of the comment raised flags to those keeping up with Trump’s expanding role in the international sphere.
Three days into the new year, Trump intervened in Venezuela to remove Nicolas Maduro from power as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign against Venezuelan drug traffickers. Since then, Trump has declared that the U.S. will run Venezuela for much longer than a year, insisting that the interim government will cooperate with this mission. Reactions have been mixed, but many Venezuelans welcomed Trump’s intervention, viewing him as the only leader willing to act against over two decades of dictatorship. Implicit in this support of Trump’s military operation is a criticism to the world’s purported peacekeeping organ, the United Nations (UN). The former Venezuelan Ambassador to the UN, Diego Arria, made this criticism explicit, expressing that the UN does not protect human rights, rather it dedicates itself to the “almost forensic task of counting dead bodies.”
In recent years, the UN has come under mounting criticism attributed to institutional paralysis. Memos mock the UN for resolving imminent threats to international peace and security via “strongly worded condemnations.” More serious critiques have been made towards inaction during instances of crimes against humanity. In the meeting to authorize a ceasefire in Gaza, an image went viral of the United States delegate to the UN raising her hand to cast the sixth American veto blocking the agreement. That veto power lies at the root of the UN’s confidence crisis.
The UN was founded after World War II to maintain international peace and security through collective decision-making. Yet the Charter grants China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States veto power in the Security Council—the prerogative to overrule any substantive decision. The veto was a prerequisite for great power buy-in at the UN’s creation, as the founders were wary of repeating the past mistakes of the League of Nations. Although this arrangement made sense back then, it now concentrates power in ways increasingly difficult to justify. The Ukraine war has been of particular concern, since the sole perpetrator, Russia, maintains the ability to unilaterally block any action moving towards peace. In Gaza, the U.S. vetoed six ceasefire resolutions before eventually bypassing the UN entirely to broker its own agreement—deepening perceptions that the UN had become irrelevant to resolving the conflict.
Ironically, the very mechanism designed to preserve the UN by securing great power commitment has become its greatest liability. Patterns of inaction resulting from repeated vetoes illustrate how veto power has paralyzed the institution on crises central to its mandate. These failures have had devastating human consequences and have tarnished the UN’s global reputation, reinforcing perceptions of it as an “inept institution.”
Amidst these events, Trump has found a perfect opening in the World Economic Forum to formally pitch his new idea for a global order: the Board of Peace. It was initially proposed by Trump in late September 2025 to oversee the postwar reconstruction of Gaza after the first ceasefire and endorsed by the UN Security Council for this limited purpose shortly after. Since then, however, Trump has assumed indefinite chairmanship of the Board and greatly expanded its scope well beyond Gaza reconstruction. He went as far as suggesting that the Board might replace the UN, although he later retreated from this initial stance. At the Board’s first meeting on Feb. 19, Trump embraced a paternalistic tone, declaring that the Board of Peace will be “almost looking over the UN.”
The Board’s membership reveals a troubling pattern. Most democratic European nations have declined to join, recognizing the initiative as a potential rival to the UN and threat to the multilateral order. Unlike the UN’s universal membership, the Board invited only 60 countries—none from Sub-Saharan Africa—and the world’s leading democracies have largely opted out. Meanwhile, illiberal leaders like Alexander Lukashenko, Viktor Orbán, and Benjamin Netanyahu have eagerly signed on, hoping to secure profitable deals while staying on Trump’s good side. When “Europe’s last dictator” eagerly embraces your peace initiative while established democracies keep their distance, it’s worth asking whose peace is actually being served.
What began as a UN-endorsed initiative has evolved into something far more troubling. Similar to the veto power, this Board of Peace was created by the UN yet its very existence now poses a threat to the functioning of the UN. At the same time, the only reason why this Board of Peace has gained traction is because of the UN’s inability to uphold its mandate in key crises that have caught the global public eye—from Ukraine, to Palestine, to Venezuela. The UN’s reputational erosion, driven largely by veto-induced paralysis, has created a vacuum that increasingly authoritarian figures like Trump can fill by positioning themselves as the only ones willing to “get things done.”
Trump’s comment at Davos is not just another one of his inflammatory comments made to incite a reaction; it is his conscious attempt to test the boundaries of his power. In the past year of his presidency, he has relished in the usage of AI-generated social media content to demonstrate his aspirations to expand his leadership resumé beyond president of the U.S: in February of last year he disseminated AI-generated videos of himself looking like the ruler of “Trump Gaza,” and in January of this year, he shared a fake Wikipedia post of himself as the “Acting President of Venezuela” in a Truth Social post.
Roughly two-thirds of invited member states attended the Board’s Davos inauguration, signaling growing traction for Trump’s challenge to the UN-led order. How serious these visions are and how far they will go remains unclear. It is unlikely that the UN will be replaced as Trump claims but without meaningful reform, the UN will likely continue its downward spiral of public trust.
Actors both within and outside the UN recognize the veto’s flaws. UN Secretary-General António Guterres is calling for limits on veto use. Leading reform movements include the French-Mexican Initiative for the P5 to refrain from vetoes in mass atrocity cases and UN General Assembly Resolution 76/262 requiring public accountability after vetoes. These initiatives suggest that even P5 states like France recognize the veto’s destabilizing effects and the risks of a world in which the UN’s paralysis makes alternatives like the Board of Peace appear viable.
Featured Image Source: The Arab Weekly