It is hard to believe that Donald Trump has only been back in the White House for a year. His accomplishments are many – but most of them are of questionable durability or benefit, including for the United States.

Even his UN-endorsed 20-point ceasefire and transition plan for Gaza released on September 29 2025 is now in danger of being subsumed in yet another grandiose fantasy of the American president: the so-called “board of peace” to be chaired by Trump.

This group of international dignitaries was originally intended to oversee the work of a more technical committee, comprising technocrats responsible for the day-to-day recovery and rebuilding of Gaza. But the board of peace’s charter makes no mention of Gaza at all.

Instead, its opening sentence declares that “durable peace requires pragmatic judgment, common-sense solutions, and the courage to depart from approaches and institutions that have too often failed”.

To make this break with such an unseemly past, the board of peace proclaims itself to be “an international organization” to “secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict” and commits to conducting its operations “in accordance with international law”.

To which the immediate reaction is that unilateralism is increasingly the hallmark of Trump’s second administration. Settling conflicts is the prerogative of the UN. And, over the past........

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