And, perhaps more important, several of America’s main European partners have declined or been noncommittal, including Britain, France and Germany. It marks another potential fracture point for the NATO allies, as Trump’s aggressive foreign policy moves have threatened to alienate even the United States’ closest friends and put some of his own priorities at risk, from discussions about halting Russia’s war in Ukraine to next steps in the Gaza ceasefire process.
European allies are wary
Many skeptics have noted with displeasure that Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko have all been invited to join.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said “no to creating an organization as it has been presented, which would replace the United Nations.” Spokespeople for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said they were looking over the terms. Starmer has concerns about its makeup, spokesman Tom Wells said.
Britain and France are the two other veto-wielding Western powers on the U.N. Security Council, which many believe the Board of Peace has ambitions to rival by working on other global conflicts.
Trump said Tuesday that “it might” replace the United Nations even as he noted the U.N. has great potential despite what he called years of failure.
“I wish we didn’t need a Board of Peace,” Trump said at a White House news conference. “The United Nations never helped me on one war.” In an apparent attempt to ally some concerns, he added, “I believe you got to let the U.N. continue, because the potential is so great.”
In a somewhat more even tone on Greenland, he said, “I think that we will work something out where NATO is going to be very happy and where we’re going to be very happy.”
But amid an outcry in Europe over his designs on the mineral-rich Arctic island, Trump still has refused to back down. “You’ll find out,” he said coyly when asked how far he is willing to go to acquire Greenland.
Working on the Board of Peace announcement
The rhetoric has alarmed European and U.S. diplomats, including some charged with implementing Trump’s foreign policy decisions.
One U.S. official, who along with others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss concerns being floated inside the administration, said the White House is eager to avoid a situation in which Trump might be embarrassed by a lack of acclaim in Davos.
That official and others with knowledge of the discussions have floated the idea that Trump could go ahead with signing the Board of Peace charter — which remains a work in progress as White House aides scramble to make it palatable to the widest array of leaders possible — to give the idea time to settle and allow the furor over Greenland to die down.
In such a scenario, Trump would found the board by signing the charter but leave announcements on the rest of its membership until later in January, the officials said.
While they may be separate subjects in Trump’s mind, his comments about Greenland and NATO are likely to complicate not only the Board of Peace and its initial mandate for Gaza but also any U.S. plan to halt the fighting in Ukraine, according to Matthew Schmidt, a professor and defense expert at the University of New Haven who formerly taught at the Army’s Command and General Staff College in Leavenworth, Kansas.
“They’re not separate issues,” Schmidt said of Greenland and European support for Trump’s other ideas. Instead of one overarching goal for his foreign policy, “Donald Trump works in deals, and each deal is different and separate, and the point of each deal is to produce a win for Donald Trump.”
The president seems to be driven by a desire to be in control, Schmidt said.
“If he can’t run it, then he will look to replace it,” Schmidt said. “Who knows if the Board of Peace was a fever dream. But it’s just completely, as we say too often, unprecedented.”
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Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani in Washington, Jill Lawless in London, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Catherine Gaschka in Paris contributed to this report.
