Author: Maciej Dachowski

The establishment of the so-called Board of Peace, proposed by the President of the United States Donald Trump, should be understood not as an episode linked solely to Gaza, but as a symptom of a deeper transformation of the international order [1]. For the first time since 1945, a key system-shaping actor is not attempting to reform existing security institutions, but is instead deliberately initiating a mechanism that competes with them. This does not yet amount to the creation of a new pillar of global order. Rather, it represents an attempt to push the boundaries of the system and a test of whether, amid the growing ineffectiveness of international institutions, peace and stabilization can be managed outside the framework of law, without reference to shared norms or formal state accountability [2][3].

This logic does not emerge in a vacuum. Earlier decisions by the U.S. administration already signaled a departure from automatic reliance on institutions and a shift toward treating participation in international organizations as conditional and subordinate to short-term political calculation. The Board of Peace fits squarely within this line of thinking, in which precedent replaces rule and operational effectiveness displaces normative commitment [3][4].

A similar shift is visible in other areas of global governance, including the selection of actors invited to key political and economic formats such as G20. Increasingly, relevance is determined not by formal state status but by systemic utility and credibility under conditions of a fragmenting international order. The Board of Peace is the most pronounced, though not the only, manifestation of this change [3][5].

Against this backdrop, it is worth noting the speech delivered by UN Secretary-General António Guterres on 15 January 2026 in New York during the General Assembly debate of the United Nations. The address, which attracted little attention, focused on administrative and organizational streamlining within the UN system [6].

Historical experience suggests, however, that major transformations of the international order have rarely resulted from institutional self-reflection. Reforms of the Bretton Woods system, the process of decolonization, and successive expansions of UN membership were driven by geopolitical pressure and shifts in the balance of power. Even the UN Security Council, widely regarded as the most problematic element of the system, has not been reformed despite decades of debate [7].

In this sense, Guterres is primarily defending institutions as form rather than as instruments of effective action. At the opposite end of the spectrum stands Trump’s initiative, which does not seek to change the rules of the game but to change the game itself, with little regard for the consequences to the normative order. It represents a radical break, one devoid of institutional constraints.

It is also important to note that the consequences of this shift extend far beyond transatlantic relations. For states such as Russia and China, the initiative to establish the Board of Peace does not constitute a normative shock but rather confirms the direction in which the system has already been moving. Moscow has for years operated outside effective institutional constraints, treating international law instrumentally and basing political decisions on the logic of faits accomplis. Beijing, in turn, has consistently developed parallel formats of cooperation and governance, formally referring to the existing order while in practice gradually circumventing it. The American initiative therefore does not create a new reality but accelerates a process in which rules cease to function as a shared point of reference and instead become one of many resources in the competition among major powers.

As a result, the analysis of the Board of Peace does not concern only the Middle East or Gaza itself. It raises a more fundamental question: whether an international order based on institutions and international law is entering a phase in which its limits are being tested, or whether it is giving way to a model of security governance grounded in power, personal relationships, and selective access to decision-making formats.

The Board of Peace as a Proposal and a Test of the System

The proposal to establish the Board of Peace was presented as an instrument for overseeing the administration and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, limited in time and scope. Already at the design stage, however, it is clear that the ambitions of its initiators extend beyond a single conflict. Both the content of the proposed charter and the method of inviting participants point to an attempt to define a new mechanism for managing peace, rather than a purely technical tool for post conflict stabilisation.

Particularly significant is the fact that the document makes no reference to the Charter of the United Nations nor to the UN’s established competences in maintaining international peace and security [8]. Instead, it implies that existing institutions have failed and should be replaced by a more flexible and politically controllable decision making mechanism. This constitutes a qualitative shift in narrative, as it does not seek to reform existing structures but to bypass them in functional terms [7].

In practice, this amounts to an attempt to create a structure that does not reform the UN system but potentially operates outside of it. The Board of Peace has no legally binding authority and no formal institutional status. Its significance lies in the precedent it sets, namely the acceptance that security governance may take place outside the framework of international law, without a formal mandate or collective responsibility of states [4][9].

The scale of this departure becomes clearer when the proposal is compared with other international formats, including those that are not part of the Western liberal order. Both the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS formally affirm their attachment to the UN Charter as the foundation of the international order. The G20, despite its selective nature, does not claim competences in the management of peace and does not openly challenge the role of the UN [10] [11].

Against this background, the proposal for the Board of Peace stands out as radical. It is the first initiative with global ambitions to assert peace related authority while fully abandoning references to the UN Charter, even at the declaratory level. It is this characteristic, rather than the scope of its planned activities, that makes the proposal a meaningful test of the limits of the contemporary international order.

Breaking with the Principle of State Representation and the Logic of Transaction

One of the most fundamental features of the proposed Board of Peace is the personal nature of its membership. Invitations to participate in the Board are not addressed to states as subjects of international law, but to individual political leaders exercising power. The confirmation of an invitation addressed to Vladimir Putin demonstrates that the addressee is not the Russian Federation as a state, but the leader himself [4].

Similarly, invitations extended to other countries effectively constitute invitations to presidents or prime ministers rather than to governments as such. This model represents a departure from the principle of state representation, which forms one of the foundations of the Westphalian system, in which states rather than individuals are the primary subjects of international relations [9]. Within the Board of Peace this relationship is reversed. Decisions are taken by leaders whose authority derives from their current political position and personal relationships, rather than from enduring institutional mandates.

The consequences of such an arrangement are far reaching. Participation in the Board of Peace does not require parliamentary ratification or standard constitutional oversight. In practice this shifts key decisions on peace and security from the realm of law and institutions into the sphere of personal relations among leaders. This model bears a closer resemblance to nineteenth century great power concert diplomacy than to the post war order based on rules and formal equality among states [12].

Closely linked to the personalization of membership is the logic of transaction. The draft charter of the Board envisages the possibility of securing a permanent position within the structure in exchange for very substantial financial contributions. Despite the personal nature of the invitations, such funds would necessarily originate from state budgets or entities controlled by the state. This creates a structure in which the state bears the financial cost without acquiring formal membership status, while the invited individual gains political influence without clear constitutional accountability.

This arrangement has no precedent in the modern system of international organizations. It entails a move away from the principle of equality among states toward a hierarchy based on political power, financial resources, and access to decision making formats. In this sense the Board of Peace does not merely test the limits of the existing order, but advances an alternative logic for its organization.

Poland under Changing Rules of the Game

The proposal to establish the Board of Peace, even at the conceptual stage, places Poland at a particularly sensitive point within the broader shift in the rules of international politics. Of central importance is the fact that invitations to the new format are personal rather than state based, shifting the burden of participation from the institutional level to the individual level. Combined with potential financial commitments, this creates a situation in which the state bears tangible costs and political risks without obtaining formal membership status or clearly defined mechanisms of accountability and oversight.

From a strategic perspective, this is therefore not a binary choice. Potential involvement in the Board of Peace could increase Poland’s short term visibility and provide access to informal decision making channels in Washington, which carries real value in an environment increasingly shaped by personal relationships. At the same time, such engagement exposes a tension between immediate effectiveness and the long term interests of a state that for decades has grounded its security in a system of rules and institutions, even when that system operated in a selective and imperfect manner.

At this point, the historical perspective becomes essential. Poland was a founding member of the League of Nations in 1920 and of the United Nations in 1945. In both cases, this was not a symbolic gesture but a deliberate effort to anchor national security and sovereignty within a framework of collective institutional order designed to constrain the arbitrariness of the strongest actors in the international system.

The same logic reemerged after the collapse of the Yalta order. Following the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, Poland’s natural course was to seek durable security guarantees within Western institutional structures. The pursuit of membership in NATO, achieved in 1999, and in the European Union in 2004 did not represent a break with earlier security thinking but its consistent continuation under new geopolitical conditions.

From the Polish perspective, this was not a choice between sovereignty and institutions, but an attempt to strengthen sovereignty through institutional anchoring. Interwar, postwar, and Cold War experiences shaped the conviction that for a medium sized state located in a zone of persistent structural tension, security depends not only on national capabilities but also on the predictability and durability of collective security frameworks.

At the same time, Polish history offers equally strong evidence that institutions often fail at moments of crisis. Both in the interwar period and during the Cold War, key security decisions were taken outside formal structures, and institutional guarantees proved insufficient when confronted with the logic of power.

This dual experience of sustained investment in institutions and repeated exposure to their limitations means that Poland today does not fit neatly into a simple division between defending the status quo and embracing a world governed by precedent. The Polish perspective is more demanding. It assumes that institutions remain necessary but do not reform themselves automatically, that rules require protection but not at the expense of their actual function, and that acting outside institutional frameworks may yield short term gains while generating long term systemic risks.

In this sense, caution toward the Board of Peace should not be understood as passivity or a lack of ambition. It reflects the experience of a state that has long relied on rules and institutions for its security while repeatedly observing that, in moments of systemic strain, those mechanisms cease to operate automatically. The Polish position therefore lies neither in the uncritical defense of the existing institutional order nor in acceptance of a world of precedents devoid of normative constraints.

The essence of the current dilemma lies in the need to operate beyond this false choice. This entails recognizing that institutions remain an important source of international stability but do not guarantee it by themselves, while actions taken outside institutional frameworks may produce immediate effects but carry systemic costs. Under such conditions, the key challenge is not to align with one of the extremes but to preserve room for maneuver and the capacity to assess consequences in a world where the relationship between rules and power is undergoing a lasting transformation.

References

[1] The White House, Statement on President Trump’s Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict, Washington, 16 January 2026.

[2] G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars, Princeton University Press, 2001.

[3] Barry Buzan, George Lawson, The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations, Cambridge University Press, 2015.

[4] Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, Princeton University Press, 1999.

[5] United Nations, Remarks by the Secretary-General to the General Assembly on Priorities for 2026, New York, January 2026.

[6] G20, Leaders’ Declaration, New Delhi, 2023.

[7] Ian Hurd, After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power in the United Nations Security Council, Princeton University Press, 2007.

[8] United Nations, Charter of the United Nations, San Francisco, 1945.

[9] Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, 1977.

[10] Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, Charter of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, St. Petersburg, 2002.

[11] BRICS, Johannesburg Declaration, XV BRICS Summit, 2023.

[12] Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848, Oxford University Press, 1994.

[13] United Nations Development Programme, UN Reform and System Coordination: Background Note, UN Secretariat, 2025.

[14] Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society, Routledge, 1992.

[15] Timothy Garton Ash, Free World: Why a Crisis of the West Reveals the Opportunity of Our Time, Penguin, 2023.

[16] Reuters, Trump invites selected leaders to join new Gaza ‘Board of Peace’, January 2026.