Trump’s Board of Peace: America’s Worst Coalition of the Willing

President Trump’s newly announced “Board of Peace,” which Trump says “might” replace the United Nations, has attracted Middle Eastern monarchs and alarmed allies, with its expanded global remit and $1 billion price tag for permanent membership. But while much of Trump’s proposal is unprecedented, many U.S. presidents have also attempted to bypass traditional multilateral institutions in favor of more exclusive arrangements. This alternative approach promises speed, efficiency, and freedom from the frustrations of working through established organizations, such as the UN.

But recent history suggests this strategy faces serious obstacles. Over the past two decades, efforts by the U.S. to build “coalitions of the willing”—that is, informal organizations of limited numbers of like-minded states—have repeatedly encountered hidden costs and unexpected limitations. With surprising frequency, these costs have motivated participants to boomerang back to the very multilateral frameworks that they had initially rejected.

The Siren Song of Coalitions of the Willing

The appeal of informal networks was undeniable in the early 2000s. Traditional international organizations seemed impossibly rigid and bureaucratic, and on top of that, the United States was regularly outvoted by developing countries whose interests diverged from U.S. priorities. Networks and informal coalitions of smaller groups of like-minded states promised a way around these obstacles.

The approach had bipartisan support. President George W. Bush formed a coalition of the willing to attack Iraq in 2003 and the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) to combat trafficking in weapons of mass destruction. The PSI’s architect, John Bolton, praised the PSI as “an activity, not an organization” in contrast with the UN, which he derided as “an organization, not an activity.” The Obama administration continued the trend, bringing on board Anne-Marie Slaughter, who had just published a book that extolled the advantages of governance through transnational networks over rigid and cumbersome formal organizations.

But our comprehensive study, published recently in the Harvard National Security Law Review, reveals something unexpected about the networks that Slaughter celebrated in her scholarship and promoted in her policy role: Twenty years later, most of these networks eventually adopted the very features they initially rejected. They broadened their membership, established or expanded dedicated bureaucracies, and sought formal legal status, privileges, and immunities.

Why? Because the costs of informality and exclusivity turned out to be higher than anticipated.

When the Financial Action Task Force Discovered It Needed the World

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) tells the story in miniature. Launched by the Group of Seven in 1989 as a temporary five-year initiative, the FATF was designed as an informal network. Scholars called it “a paradigmatic case of a selective, Western-driven ‘international club’”—and a very successful one.

The initial design made sense from Washington’s perspective. The FATF brought together like-minded wealthy democracies to combat money laundering. The small membership kept negotiations simple. And the threat of losing access to U.S.-controlled financial markets provided enforcement leverage.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001.

Suddenly, combating terrorist financing required cooperation beyond the Western club. Russia, which had been on the FATF’s “black list” of non-cooperative territories in 2002, became a full member in 2003. The about-face was dramatic and necessary.

With Russia’s participation, the FATF secured something its initial design could never achieve: formal endorsement by the UN Security Council in 2005. The Security Council “strongly urged” all member states to implement the FATF’s recommendations. As the FATF’s president noted, this UN backing represented “a major step toward effective global implementation.” The General Assembly followed with its own consensus endorsement in 2006.

The transformation accelerated following that endorsement. What began as a temporary network of seven countries now has 205 participating jurisdictions and 20 international organizations—more participants than the UN General Assembly. The organization established a 65-person secretariat, with staff enjoying the protections of international civil servants through the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

By 2017-2018, key European members explored transforming the task force into a formal international organization. In 2021, a UN panel recommended “creating the legal foundation for an inclusive intergovernmental body on money-laundering” with “appropriate rules for universal representation.”

The lesson is clear: The U.S.’s preferred model of a small, informal network proved inadequate for achieving its own goals. The threat of exclusion from U.S. markets wasn’t enough. Combating global money laundering required the broad membership and more of the formal structures that traditional international organizations provide.

Market leverage alone couldn’t substitute for political legitimacy.

The International Organization for Migration and the Stigma of U.S. Dominance

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) offers a different cautionary tale. First established in 1951 to resettle displaced Europeans after World War II, the organization’s original incarnation was deliberately designed to exclude communist states and remain outside the UN system. U.S. influence was dominant.

The design choice haunted the IOM for decades, even as it tried to reinvent itself as a truly global organization. As late as 2003, the IOM counted only 98 members. Five major powers—China, Russia, India, Indonesia, and Brazil—participated merely as observers. The Middle East remained largely absent.

More damaging than the membership gap was the IOM’s reputation. A senior official said the organization was perceived as “a super-big NGO, not quite fit for the big leagues.” More pointedly, it was viewed as an “American-run organization.” For much of its history, the United States was by far its largest funder. And from its founding until 2018, each of the IOM’s directors-general was an American. Unsurprisingly, the IOM’s operational portfolio closely tracked U.S. foreign policy objectives.

The consequences were tangible. Officials noted that despite overlapping missions with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), staff rarely moved between the two organizations. When transfers did occur, they flowed in one direction: from the IOM to the UNHCR. The IOM couldn’t attract talent. It couldn’t command respect.

William Lacy Swing, who served as the IOM’s director-general from 2008 to 2018, made recruiting Russia and China into the organization his personal mission. As he explained, “It says a lot about an organization to not have Russia and China as members.” Their absence reinforced the perception that the IOM was an American puppet rather than a genuinely international institution.

The breakthrough for the IOM came in 2016 when it joined the UN system as a related agency. China became a member exactly one day before IOM formally joined the UN system. Russia followed in 2020, with its permanent representative explicitly citing the IOM’s UN status as the reason.

IOM’s new status as a related agency brought immediate benefits. The IOM gained access to the UN’s Chief Executives Board for Coordination—the highest-level coordination forum of the UN system. In 2017, just one year after joining the UN system, the IOM developed the UN Global Compact for Migration, setting a global strategy on a highly charged issue. This leadership role would have been unthinkable given the IOM’s earlier peripheral status.

The lesson? An organization designed to serve U.S. interests while avoiding the complications of universal membership spent decades handicapped by that very design. Only by embracing the broader, more inclusive model could the IOM achieve the legitimacy and effectiveness its mission required.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Hidden Costs of Legal Ambiguity

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) illustrates another pitfall: the practical problems that emerge when an institution’s legal status remains deliberately ambiguous.

Emerging from Cold War diplomacy, participating states established various structures in the early 1990s but consistently avoided formally defining the organization as an international institution. This created lasting ambiguity: Was the OSCE an international organization with rights and obligations under international law, or merely an informal cooperation mechanism?

The ambiguity carried real costs. In 2004, participating states attempted to loan aerial military drones and personnel to the OSCE operations. Despite strong political will, the arrangement fell through because “such equipment and experts from the potentially contributing states belonged to the military, which could not make loans to an entity not enjoying international legal personality.” The OSCE was forced to obtain these services through expensive commercial contractors instead.

Perhaps most dramatically, in 2015, a host state unilaterally terminated its agreement with the OSCE through a simple note from its foreign ministry. The OSCE received one month to wind up a 16-year presence and extract all international officials and assets. As the OSCE’s former general counsel explained, “The OSCE had no recourse but to acquiesce.”

A multilateral treaty would have provided legal protection and orderly withdrawal procedures, but the organization’s ambiguous legal status left it defenseless.

What This Means for the Board of Peace

These three cases reveal a consistent pattern. The FATF discovered that market leverage alone couldn’t achieve global implementation—it needed the political legitimacy that comes from broad membership and UN endorsement. The IOM found that its reputation as a U.S. pawn undermined its effectiveness, requiring a move into the UN system to gain credibility. The OSCE learned that an ambiguous legal status created practical obstacles to securing equipment, protecting staff, and maintaining operations.

If President Trump’s Board of Peace gets off the ground, it will face these same challenges to an even greater degree. The text of its charter, as published in the Times of Israel, reflects an institution that is, on its face, completely controlled by its U.S. “chairman.” It is a level of control that will put off many prospective members—and that even sows uncertainty about the board’s status as an organization with the “international personality” that the charter claims for it.

European allies have declined to participate, citing concerns about Russian involvement and questions about how the board would operate in conjunction with the UN. France, Norway, and the United Kingdom have all passed. China has been noncommittal. Trump himself rescinded Canada’s invitation.

The composition matters. When an initiative attracts Middle Eastern monarchs and Belarus’s authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko, but struggles to attract democratic allies, that sends a signal about legitimacy.

Trump’s comment that the board “might” replace the UN has only deepened skepticism among allies who worry about undermining an organization established 80 years ago to maintain global peace.

The Board of Peace may yet evolve in unexpected ways, but history suggests the path forward will be difficult. Organizations that exclude major democracies struggle for legitimacy. Bodies that bypass the UN often find themselves needing UN endorsement. Participants in informal arrangements eventually discover they need formal legal structures.

The evidence from the past two decades suggests that exclusivity and informality have hidden costs that become apparent over time. These costs are measured in lost efficiency and diminished credibility, and they are exposed in the eventual need to recreate the very features of multilateralism that were initially rejected.

The FATF needed the UN. The IOM needed the UN. Even informal networks find themselves hiring staff, establishing secretariats, and seeking formal legal status.

U.S. power remains formidable. But power alone cannot generate the legitimacy necessary for effective global governance. For that, the United States still needs what it has long resisted: genuine multilateralism, with all its frustrations and constraints.

The choice isn’t between U.S. leadership and multilateral cooperation. Effective U.S. leadership requires working through multilateral institutions, even when doing so is inconvenient. The alternative is the pattern documented here: initial efficiency followed by gradual recognition that shortcuts don’t work, culminating in a return to the traditional model.

The Board of Peace may learn this lesson. Or it may join the list of ambitious American-dominated initiatives that discovered, too late, that going it alone comes at a price. Better to start with what works than to rediscover its value the hard way.

Alternatively, the U.S. could abandon the effort to reinvent the wheel and use existing machinery. The design of the United Nations—and specifically the Security Council veto—is extraordinarily favorable to the United States. Indeed, even Bush realized this. Notwithstanding Bolton’s posturing, Bush’s administration made quiet but extensive and creative use of the Security Council to address situations in North Korea and Iran—as well as broader issues like financing of terrorism and the risk of non-state actors getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction.