The World Economic Forum is usually one big boring circlejerk between the world’s most powerful people, but this year at Davos was special. Not only did we get major news stories about Greenland and Europe, but Trump is apparently trying to make a new world order (we are living in a Hoi4 mod). Ok, that’s an exaggeration. The Board of Peace isn’t going to replace the UN, but it is set up to be a massive international body that will affect the lives of millions, if not billions, of people.
RISE OF POPULISM AND DISINFORMATION
Since the early 2010s, we as a society have seen a steady increase in democratic backsliding and populist anti-establishment movements. Donald Trump here in the United States is the first to come to mind, but he is far from the only one. Countries around the world have seen the rise of men and women like Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Victor Orban in Hungary, Benjamin Netenyau in Israel, Jaiver Meilli in Argentina, Georgia Melloini in Italy, Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, Prabowo Subianto in Indonesia, and Narendra Modi in India, (and just to get this off my chest none of these people, including Trump, are fascist. They’re populist. Stop calling Trump and other leaders like him fascist; it pisses me off as a political science nerd). Six of these populist-borderline-autocrats have joined Trump on the Board of Peace. One (India) has been invited to join, and one (Italy) has refused. That is not to say all countries that have joined or have been invited to join are democratic backsliding countries or full-on autocracies. Mongolia, for example, was accepted and their democracy is doing fine (you probably didn’t even know Mongolia was a country, let alone a democracy, did you?), but at the same time, even USA adversaries, China, and Russia have been invited to join, and those countries aren’t even democratically backsliding or autocracies, they are full blown dictatorships. Inviting all these nations to an international body whose mission is to promote peace sounds like nothing but an oxymoron.
MORE POWER INSTEAD OF PEACE
Speaking of dictatorship, Trump, ever the egomaniac, decided to make himself Chairman… for life. I wouldn’t want him as chairman for a year, let alone his entire life (also, between this and Minneapolis, you are doing a great job beating those dictator allegations, Donald). Not only that, but Trump holds near sole authority when it comes to who is allowed to join the Board of Peace, and before you ask, he’s already abusing this power. Canada was invited to join; however, after Prime Minister Carney signed a deal with China and then proceeded to publicly talk negatively about Trump at the World Economic Forum, Trump rescinded Canada’s invitation to join. This abuse of power makes it so that only nations that agree with Trump on an ideological basis, or any countries that are willing to stroke his ego, are allowed to join. Any sort of defiance against Trump bars you from entering ( which makes you wonder why he invited China, but anyway). This international body is a mess in its current state, and with the short-tempered populist clowns running it, there is no chance this will ever achieve peace anywhere, let alone in Gaza. Trump is capable of making peace between nations, he did it during India and Pakistan’s brief war last year and he was able to finally end the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict after 33 years of on and off war, but it’s clear he didn’t create this board for promoting piece in gaza; he did it so he could get more POWER, and I’m pretty sure I can speak for everyone when I say he has enough power as is.
