Trump's model UN

Well, this is a very exciting day. Long in the making, and many countries have just received their notice, and everybody wants to be a part of it. In the announcement at Davos of who's joining the president's new initiative. The Board of Peace. It was clear that everybody did not want to be a part of it. No France, no UK, but Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, El Salvador. Trump talked a lot about conflict. But they have to give up their weapons, and if they don't do that, it's going to be the end of them. And in Nigeria, we're annihilating terrorists who are killing Christians. Though he had some nice moments. I think it's going to happen. To end decades of suffering, stop generations of hatred and bloodshed, and forge a beautiful, everlasting, and glorious peace. So what is Trump's Board of Peace? Timu, UN, a money grab, something that he's going to ditch when he gets embarrassed by the takers. I'm so sorry, Azerbaijan. Or is it part of a bold plan to remake a troubled world? That's ahead on Today Explained. Hi, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Are you looking for a beach read this summer? May I suggest your big wireless bill? It's got suspense, mystery, a slightly flat, emotional arc, and a shocking twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time. Fortunately, though, Mint's story is better. Every plan, $15 dollars a month a month. Even unlimited. That's it. Happy ending. Zero tears. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three months, $90 for $1.90 for $1.20 per month. Taxes and fees extra. See terms. Hey friends, Olivia from Allie. Between new routines and the ultimate group project known as parenting, you need science-back solutions that work with your life. That's where Allie comes in. Start your mornings off right with multis made to support nutrition and immune health. Choose from our lineup of gut-supporting probiotics, and we've got occasional sleep support to help the whole fan chase their big dreams. Head back to class with the number one gummy supplement brand. Stock up on awly.com today. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. You're listening to Today Explained. Paul Beckett, senior editor of The Atlantic. What is the Board of Peace? It's easiest to think of it as a United Nations mixed with a high-end golf club. This is Donald Trump's effort to have a body that will first, and this is its original rationale, oversee the reconstruction of Gaza. That's the context that brought about this. The 10,046 meeting of the Security Council, is called to order.

The Board of Peace, which will be led by President Trump, remains the cornerstone of our effort. The board will coordinate the delivery of humanitarian assistance, facilitate Gaza's development, and support a technocratic committee of Palestinians responsible for day-to-day operations. It is backed by the United Nations in that context. How it has been constituted and the way that he is pitching it. Everybody wants to be a part of it. Is that this will effectively make an alternate to the UN that can go around the world. intervening wherever it likes. Today, the world is richer, safer, and much more peaceful than it was just one year ago. We put out all those fires. A lot of people didn't know, including me, that some of those wars were going on. He is the chairman, he is the owner of the club, and it is by invitation only. And what is it supposed to do in his telling? In Gaza, it is to oversee new institutions designed to try and get Gaza back on its feet. And you may have seen in Davis, Jared Kushner presented very elaborate architectural renderings of what Gaza might look like in the future. It could be a hope, it could be a destination, have a lot of industry, and really be a place that the people there can thrive, have great employment. That's what the UN actually... gave a permission for it. The weird thing about it is its charter says nothing about Gaza and really says it will be there to bounce around as it sees fit. And the digs at the UN are pretty obvious. The preamble says that... The reason for the board is because, quote, durable peace requires pragmatic judgment, common sense solutions, and the courage to depart from approaches and institutions that if too often failed. That's the end of that quote, but you go down a couple more paragraphs, paragraphs, and it says it is trying to be quoted. A more nimble and effective international peace building body. The UN is the only other institution of its type in the world. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so how do countries join the Board of Peace? How do you get on? You get asked. You get asked by Donald J. Trump. So it's by his invitation as to heads of government. If he invites you and you say yes, there's no membership fee to join. However, if you go that route, you will just be on for a three-year term and he can decide whether you stay on or not. If you want a permanent seat. The three-year membership shall not apply to member states that contribute more than USD $1 billion in cash funds to the Board of Peace within the first year. You or your country pays a billion dollars. That way you get what would, I suppose, be akin to a permanency on the United Nations Security Council. And so Trump himself is inviting people? Who's he invited so far? Lots of heads of state, which, as he said,

Social. Dear Prime Minister Carney, please let this letter serve to represent that the Board of Peace is withdrawing its invitation to you regarding Canada's joining what will be the most prestigious board of leaders ever assembled at any time. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Vladimir Putin has been invited, so probably prospects of the Board of Peace ever working on Ukraine, maybe slim or not, but he hasn't said whether he'll join yet. You got to pay a billion dollars. You or your government has to pay a billion dollars. No small fee. What do the people joining the Board of Peace get out of this? Proximity to Donald J. Trump, I think, is probably the simplest thing. They will have a say in world affairs if this takes off. So if you're a very small country and if you can afford it, you know, you will have a hand in voting and steering post-conflict efforts around the world. If... it all comes to pass. It's hard to envisage how it will work from just reading the Charter. So a huge amount of this has yet to be decided or at least elaborated on. Let me ask you about the UN here. So respectfully, you can't spell dysfunction without the UN. The Security Council is supposed to manage global conflict and keep the peace. The last couple decades have not been great. Russia and China have permanent seats. Makes it hard to get anything done. So I wonder about the argument that somebody should come up with another way to handle global peace. And here's Donald Trump making an effort in his way. What do you think? I think it is a very fair point. It's very hard to find people who think that the UN is all that it could be, including Trump. He went there in September and stood up in front of the United Nations and said, What is the purpose of the United Nations? You know, you said it was too weak to step in and end wars. All they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up. It's empty words. And empty words don't solve war. All those kinds of things. So, yes, I don't think anybody would want to be in a position of saying, why do we need an alternative? Because the UN is working so well. The flip side is, it's very hard to see... what the accountability mechanisms here, what the transparency is, where does the money go? They just said, well, put the money in reputable banks. It's like, okay. And the other thing here that I think could get complicated is this isn't a United States exercise. This is a Trump exercise. Nowhere does it say that he has to step down when he starts being president. In fact, in the charter,

He is the only named person. Donald J. Trump shall serve as inaugural chairman of the Board of Peace, and he shall separately serve as inaugural representative of the United States of America. So in theory, after he leaves office, he will stay as chairman and then invite his successor, or not, because he gets to make the invitations. He will be in a position to invite the president of the United States to serve on this board. So it just gets very complicated when you stop dealing with an institution and start dealing with a private members club so closely associated with a private citizen. Yeah. I want to bring this back to Gaza because those renderings that you mentioned, they are remarkable, right? They show a developed Gaza, skyline, tall buildings, all the things you associate with Donald Trump. If the stated purpose right now is we're going to help rebuild Gaza and you've got a bunch of real estate guys involved, where do you think that may be headed? I think the billion dollars that countries pay. for that permanent seat is designed to provide funds for the reconstruction of Gaza. And so good thing. I think the question then is, okay, but who gets a contract? How is it decided? You know, how do you stop it becoming the kind of insiders network for the lucrative contracts that will inevitably follow efforts to do post-conflict reconstruction wherever it is in the world? How do you see, you read the charter, you've been looking into this, it's called the Board of Peace. How are they defining peace? As a... Goal. Okay. They're in good company. As a good thing. If this had been in Europe, it probably would have been called the Board for Reconstruction and Vitalization of the territory called Gaza or something incredibly tedious. I mean, Board of Peace, President Trump is a superb marketer. I think it is a very catchy. title and one that fits with the way that he has portrayed himself. As president, I ended those eight wars in nine months. He was openly soliciting for a Nobel Peace Prize. Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize. There's a lot of peace in his legacy building, and I would think that's probably the most helpful context to look at it. Paul Beckett is a senior editor at the Atlantic. Coming up, it's not just the UN Security Council that President Trump wants to redo. Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney obliquely accuses Trump of wanting to remake the world order. What's that mean?

This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace, and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message, and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew, well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer find more on Facebook. I'm Archmanning. I'm Madison Skinner. I'm Eva Jovich. I'm Decorian Moore. Want to train like a Red Bull athlete? Tell us your fitness goals this summer to enter the Red Bull Athlete Challenge. You'll get to try each of our workouts for a chance to win an ultimate Red Bull experience. I think you have what it takes. So good, so good, so good. New markdowns, up to 70% off are at Nordstrom rack stores now. Stock up and stay big on shoes, tops, dresses, accessories, and more must-haves for summer. Join the Nordi Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. Today, this. World. Today explained, I'm Noel King with Monica Duffy Toft. She's a professor of international politics at Tufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Director of the Center for Strategic Studies. All right, so it is unbelievably, Monica, still January of 2026. And we have had really significant events in Venezuela, in Greenland or over Greenland. with the EU and NATO. And all of this is leading people to say President Donald Trump is trying to remake the world order. What is the world order? So the world order was established after World War II. Far into the night, the happy crowd screamed their relief at the end of the greatest war in history. I'm Kenneth Cowell from Arizona. Okay, boy. This is the happiest day of my life. Wonderful, wonderful thing. We want peace and prosperity for the world as a whole. And so the United States and its Western allies decided to establish rules that would govern the international system, and along with that a series of institutions, including, by the way, the United Nations. These representatives of 50 nations, they have made a beginning, a brave beginning that can build a mighty structure for peace. The time for action is here now. And what they were trying to do is set up a system of law, international law, norms, and rules in order to prevent a third world war. So the idea was that force, the use of force, the use of the military was no longer going to be an acceptable form of politicking, international politicking on the global arena.

All right, so this is the thing that President Trump seeks to change or to undo or to disrupt. You've written about a philosophy that you think is relevant right now. What's the philosophy? He's trying to reestablish the U.S. sphere of influence, its control over the Western Hemisphere, right? In a sphere of influence, it's best understood as control without rule. So with states within a sphere, right, they're sovereign on paper. They have their own government, right? They have their own borders, their own money, and they have international recognition. But their strategic choices are restrained by the great power. And in this case, it's the United States. And so the United States, what it's doing is it's saying under President Trump and his administration is they can't freely choose alliances, trade partners, right, without crossing lines or without getting agreement from the United States. What's the sphere of influence that the U.S. is seeking? So we clearly want to have a lot of influence in Venezuela. We need that for ourselves. We need that for the world. Greenland, the president, has been very clear there as well. Probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force. Although he climbed down. He climbed down. Now everyone's saying, oh, good. What other nations, what other regions do we see Trump wanting to have influence over? And what does he want them to do or not do? We know that he wants the Western sphere under U.S. control. This was part of the national security strategy that was released, and it's very clear that the United States is going to dominate the region. National Security Strategy of the United States of America, page 17. The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity, a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region. You can look at what is done in Venezuela, where it just said Venezuela can no longer have relations with China, trade relations formally, with China and with Russia, shutting off the oil. You have to understand, why does China need their oil? Why does Russia need their oil? Why does Iran need their oil? They're not even in this continent. This is the Western hemisphere. This is where we live. But paradoxically, it also wants to have global reach. And so now we're seeing the tensions. There's a flotilla, as Trump uses it, moving to the Middle East in order to get Iran to behave. We have a big... And then also the United States wants to maintain its leverage in Asia. It has allies there, of course, Japan and Taiwan and South Korea. So on the one hand, it's really pressing its case.

in the Western Hemisphere, but then it's also insisting that it should have some leverage in these other regions. And the one that's probably the most problematic is Asia. Because, of course, if the United States can have pointy elbows in its own sphere, China could make the argument, then why can't we? Okay, so this makes me wonder then who are the other great powers? Who are the other nations trying to influence the smaller nations here? So, you know, there's the top two are probably the Russian Federation, of course, which invaded Ukraine in 2014 and then again in 2022. And Vladimir Putin's made it very clear that he wants to determine sort of Ukrainian's foreign policy so much so that it doesn't want to joining the EU or NATO and it's what NATO expand. So the Russian Federation is one, and of course the other one is China, whose economy is booming as a huge population, and of course a large landmass. The big three are the United States, the Russian Federation, and then, of course, the People's Republic of China. Okay, so this gets interesting because it makes me think of the way she and Vladimir Putin talk about their objectives in the world. So let's go back to early January after the United States spirited Nicholas Maduro out of Venezuela. Stephen Miller got on television and he said, We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by... strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that exist since the beginning of time. It was striking. It was a striking statement. It reminded me of the way Vladimir Putin talks about the world. It reminded me of the way quietly, not publicly, she talks about the world. In trying to establish spheres of influence and to establish dominance, is the United States just doing what Russia and China are already doing? Noelle, that is a great way to put it. Thank you. But what I would say is, it really is, it's a lovely way to put it. But what I would say is, is we were already there. So the United States superpower has always been trade and free trade. And so what's paradoxical here is that we did not need to use force to do that. And now we're using force. But at a time in history, when we're finding that it's not as effective in securing our national strategic goals. So what's kind of a shame here is that the United States is, yes, it seems to, under President Trump, he seems to like this muscular. foreign policy, you know, you get the quick victories, right? Venezuela was a quick victory. You're in and out quickly. But over the longer term, it's eroding, first of all, the American reputation. And over the longer term, it's actually undermining our interests. What you're going to see is a balancing against the United States. You're already seeing the hedging. You're already seeing that. Where you've got Mark Carney of Canada declaring. We know the old order is not coming back.

We're in a new world order and we cannot rely on our allies. We cannot rely on the United States. And he's not alone. You said the United States is using force, and I wonder to what degree you think that's true. So Venezuela, yes, we did go in. It was a quick mission. I think we could put it that way. Greenland, we did not actually do anything, nor would we even end up levying tariffs on Europe over the whole Greenland fight. President Trump backed off. So when you say we're using force, how do you see that? Is it... You're not talking boots on the ground, right? Potentially. I mean, the Trump administration did say with the Greenland operation before it de-escalated, thankfully, that they wouldn't discount putting American forces in there and reestablishing those bases. After the war, we gave Greenland back to Denmark. How stupid were we to do that? I wasn't fully confident that the U.S. wasn't going to deploy troops, and I'm pretty sure the Europeans, they feared that the U.S. was going to take that step. We love sanctions, and now Trump loves tariffs, and we're using them not only against adversaries, but against allies. Noel, that's the difference, right? Is that we're threatening our allies. And because the United States is so quick with the trigger, we can't be trusted that we're not going to use force. It does indeed feel like we are barreling towards something in this moment. We talked in the first half of the show about President Trump's Board of Peace and this kind of... At this juncture, minor bid to replace the United Nations, we've talked about, you know, the international norms that are being upended. What do you think we are barreling toward and try not to scare us too much? What's unnerving is that it really does seem to be one individual within this administration that has a lot of say about where we're headed. The question is, is how far is this administration willing to push this? And my concern, Noel, is that Iran was a successful operation. At least they've sold it at that. Choose your word, obliterating, destroying Iran's nuclear. capabilities. The experts say, no, we didn't denue the nuclear capacity of Iran for that long, but they see it as a victory. The most complex and secretive military operation in history. And then secondarily, Venezuela was quick and dirty, right? We got in and we got out. Captured Maduro in the dead of night. It was dark. And so these many successes may emboldened them a little bit more.

And the question is, is how are allies going to respond? And we see how they're responding. They're uniting. They're saying we've got to keep this together because we cannot, the United States is now not a reliable partner. And of course, they feel as if they're fighting for that Western liberal order and that Ukraine is the front line. And then the adversaries, the Russian Federation and China, what lessons are they taking from this? China, I think, is sort of, you know, under President Xi Jinping is kind of thumping his chest and saying, I'm the big boy in the room, right? We're stable. We're not going to use force, right? And then Vladimir Putin is looking at this smirking thinking, great, if the United States can get away with these shenanigans, then I can too, right? So I think we're in kind of a Wild West situation. And the question is, how are they going to respond to it? Monica Duffy Toft of the Tufts Fletcher School. Peter Balinan-Rosen produced today's show. Jolie Myers edited. Bridger Dunnigan and David Tadishore engineered and Andrea Lopez Crusado check the facts. I'm Noelle King. It's today explained.

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