Donald Trump is not known for understatement. When he told reporters this week that his Board of Peace has “the chance to be the most consequential board ever assembled of any kind,” he was making a claim of extraordinary scope — one that covers not just international diplomacy but human organizational history. As the board held its first meeting Thursday, it is worth asking: is it?
The competition is formidable. The UN Security Council, which Trump’s board implicitly seeks to rival, has managed international peace and security since 1945. The Concert of Europe shaped the post-Napoleonic world order. The Congress of Vienna redrew Europe’s map. The Bretton Woods conference created the international financial architecture. These are consequential boards in any meaningful sense of the word.
Trump’s board brings together more than two dozen nations to address a conflict that has defined Middle East politics for decades. If it succeeds — if it facilitates Hamas disarmament, enables Palestinian governance, supports reconstruction, and creates a lasting ceasefire — it would indeed be consequential. Its impact on the lives of two million people in Gaza alone would be profound.
But the board is holding its first meeting with unverified funding pledges, no public agenda, an absent Palestinian voice, key US allies staying away, and a governance committee stranded in Egypt. Hamas has not disarmed. Israeli strikes continue. The transitional government cannot enter Gaza. These are not the conditions of an organization that has already proven its consequence.
Consequential boards are defined by results, not by the ambition of their chairman. Thursday’s first meeting begins the long process of finding out whether Trump’s Board of Peace will join the list of historically significant diplomatic institutions — or whether it will become a footnote to the ongoing tragedy of Gaza.