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Say what you like about Donald Trump, but the man has devoted much of his career to world peace. Between 1996 and 2015, he was a co-owner of the Miss Universe pageant.
On Thursday, the US president took his passion to a new level. On stage at Davos, he inaugurated a new “Board of Peace”, an organisation which, although it may lack Miss Universe’s credibility, compensates through sheer chutzpah.
“This board has the chance to be one of the most consequential bodies ever created,” said Trump.
It was certainly a turnaround. Just a few days ago, on Sunday, the president wrote that he no longer felt “an obligation to think purely of Peace”, since he hadn’t been awarded the Nobel Prize. Yet here he was: from bored of peace to board of peace in five days. Forget the road to Damascus; true conversions happen on the jet to Davos.
And who better to solve the world’s conflicts than the man who, in his speech at the WEF a day earlier, became confused about whether he wished to illegally seize Greenland or Iceland?
There have been teething troubles. “Everybody wants to be a part of it,” Trump insisted of his new club. But big European countries had already turned him down. The initial members include Saudi Arabia, Israel and Belarus. Vladimir Putin says Russia may join too, if, and this is not a joke, he can pay the membership from Russia’s frozen assets. If these guys can run a peace initiative, the Sinaloa Cartel can run Narcotics Anonymous.
So Trump stood on stage with a motley crew, most of whom would probably fail the “know your customer” checks to open a US bank account. It was Mar-a-Lago meets a Most Wanted list. Soho House must be looking on in envy.
Officially, permanent membership of the Board of Peace will cost you $1bn. In practice, looking at how the non-US representatives had to sit meekly on stage as Trump spoke, there seems to be an additional one-off cost: personal dignity.
Somewhere in the audience was Sir Tony Blair, member of the Board of Peace’s executive board. A penny for his thoughts? I’d be surprised if he were that cheap.
Ronald Reagan had a plaque in the Oval Office with the phrase: “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he does not mind who gets the credit.” Trump works on the opposite principle.
The funniest moment of the event was when the president discussed his own role as the board’s chairman: “I was very honoured when they asked me to do it.” Mr President, the whole thing is a sham dreamt up by your son-in-law; do you think the headhunters had a long list?
Leaked drafts of the charter give Trump the right to nominate his successor and to veto its executives’ decisions. It’s a form of governance that will at least be familiar to any dictators among the membership.
You felt for the broadcasters. Earlier this week, they had to take seriously the prospect of transatlantic war. Now they were forced to consider a new era of peace. “A couple of things to fact-check,” said the hapless BBC presenter. “[Trump] said we have peace in the Middle East . . . Just yesterday, 11 people were killed in Gaza.” Really, some people wouldn’t know peace if it torpedoed them in the face.
The president had rambled on for more than an hour on Wednesday. On Thursday, his pearls of wisdom included: “The world is a region.” The event felt stale even before secretary of sycophancy Marco Rubio was press-ganged to talk about Trump’s “achievements”.
The Trump administration has made people nostalgic for many things. Making people wish for the days of a normal Davos may be one of its only lasting successes.