India faces a stark choice on Trump’s Board of Peace

New Delhi cautious as US President’s ambitious peace body challenges UN role.

“To be, or not to be, that is the question,” wrote Shakespeare about Prince Hamlet’s dilemma. India’s predicament in accepting President Donald Trump’s invitation to his “Board of Peace” is no less. Prince Hamlet justifies his wish to end this life, posing the question: “For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely?” If India rejects the invitation, will it risk inviting Trump’s “proud man’s contumely”? Already, the president has repeatedly claimed that he was behind the recent ceasefire between India and Pakistan.

While Pakistan has profusely thanked Trump and even “nominated” him for the Nobel Peace Prize, India has denied any US role. Islamabad has also joined the board.

Earlier, on November 17, 2025, the UN Security Council, in Resolution 2803, endorsed Trump’s board “as a transitional administration with international legal personality that will set the framework, and coordinate funding for, the redevelopment of Gaza”. However, the proposed charter of the board reportedly seeks to “secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict”.

Trump’s September 29, 2025, 20-point roadmap to peace in Gaza envisages a “Board of Peace”, an umbrella body made up of tens of select world leaders from a “distinguished group of nations”, ranging from Albania to the Vatican, and permanently chaired by Trump himself, to oversee the next steps to turn Gaza into a “deradicalised terror-free zone”, govern and rebuild Gaza.

In his invitation letter dated January 18, 2026, Trump boasted of his board as “the most impressive and consequential board ever assembled, which will be established as a new International Organisation and Transitional Governing Administration”. On January 20, 2026, when asked whether the board would replace the UN, Trump ominously said: “It might.” Elaborating on the board’s sweeping goals, Trump told a packed hall at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which hung on his every word: “Once this Board is completely formed, we can do pretty much whatever we want to do and we’ll do it in conjunction with the United Nations.”

The board is not limited to Gaza, and its task is not only to “solidify peace in the Middle East” but also to “embark on a bold new approach to resolving global conflict!” France’s Emmanuel Macron has said that the board bypasses multilateralism and seeks to undermine the “principles and structure of the United Nations”. Slovenia’s Prime Minister Robert Golob said he had declined the invitation because the body “dangerously interferes with the broader international order”. Norway and Sweden have also turned down the invitation. Some 20 countries, mostly Arab or Islamic, have reportedly accepted it. Russia, China and India have yet to make up their minds.

Since his second arrival at the White House in January 2025, the world, as depicted by Trump, increasingly resembles the interwar years of Mussolini’s Italy, Tojo’s Japan, Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. As Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, obliquely noted at Davos about the Trump world order: “That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” He warned: “The middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, we’re on the menu.” Carney received a standing ovation for his homily and, the following day, was ticked off by Trump at Davos.

Is the situation so dire? President Trump himself has said that only his own sense of “morality” and his “mind” can set limits on his freedom of action. Despite this bravado, there has been pushback from China and the EU, and a chastened Trump has quickly retraced his steps on tariffs and, more recently, on the use of force to take Greenland. North Korea remains beyond Trump’s reach, and a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia has proven elusive even for him.

Yet, a ceasefire after two years of Israeli retribution against Hamas for its raid into Israel on October 7, 2023 — which had turned Gaza into rubble, left Gazans homeless and taken tens of thousands of Palestinian lives — must be squarely credited to the maverick president. On October 10, 2025, when the ceasefire came into effect, Gazans and the world heaved a huge sigh of relief. In his second avatar, President Trump had arrived. But the United Nations, already on the margins, was further pushed towards irrelevance by Trump’s role as the world’s chief peacemaker.

Trump’s disdain for BRICS is well known. Is the board an effort to create a smaller but more effective body of mostly yes-saying countries, as opposed to the UN, which has been in stasis since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? The contours of the board and its modalities remain unknown. All that is known is that membership lasts for three years, while permanent membership will cost $1 billion. Despite the misgivings the board has generated, it must be given a chance, if not for anything else, then for Gaza.

While India can follow China and Russia’s lead in accepting or rejecting the invitation, one should bear in mind that the only thing consistent about Trump is his inconsistency. There is thus no need to fret about the permanence of this board or the damage it might do to the established world order. Even the Americans needed a UN resolution to legitimise the board, for, despite all its shortcomings, no forum can ever mirror the UN’s representative character or the legitimacy it can confer on an international initiative.

(R Kannan served with the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs for nearly three decades in several capacities, including as a senior political official.)