U.S. President Donald Trump closed out 2025 with his plan to end the Israel-Hamas war in fine fettle. With an endorsement from the U.N. Security Council to form a “Board of Peace” to oversee Gaza’s future, Mr. Trump entered 2026 riding high in his self-described role as a “president of peace” who sought to end conflicts and certainly not create new ones.

But after having ordered a military operation to capture then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in the first days of January and threatened to use force to annex Greenland from fellow NATO member Denmark, the next steps in his Gaza ceasefire plan and his attempt to expand the mandate of the Board of Peace to other global crises appear to be at risk.

Just last week, the Board of Peace seemed set to be formed without much controversy on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, this week with Mr. Trump at the helm of a selection of world leaders focused on Gaza. Then, Mr. Trump upended that scenario with an abrupt threat on Saturday (January 17, 2026) to impose tariffs on European allies that had rallied to the defence of Greenland and Denmark.

He followed up with a series of insults and provocative social media posts about seizing Greenland. In one message to Norway’s Prime Minister, Mr. Trump accused the Norwegian government of blocking the independent Nobel committee from awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize, suggesting his primary focus would no longer be peace.

With more than 60 invitations to the Board of Peace sent out, fewer than 10 have so far been accepted, including from a handful of leaders considered to be anti-democratic authoritarians.

And, perhaps more important, several of America’s main European partners have declined or been non-committal, including Britain, France and Germany. It marks another potential fracture point for the NATO allies, as Mr. 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.

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.

Mr. Trump said on Tuesday (January 20, 2026) 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,” Mr. 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, Mr. 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.

The rhetoric has alarmed European and U.S. diplomats, including some charged with implementing Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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, Mr. 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 Mr. 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 defence 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,” Mr. Schmidt said of Greenland and European support for Mr. 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, Mr. Schmidt said.

“If he can’t run it, then he will look to replace it,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Who knows if the Board of Peace was a fever dream. But it’s just completely, as we say too often, unprecedented.”

Published – January 21, 2026 06:42 am IST