Serbia - not by its own merit - avoided being included in Peace Committee, project Donald Trump which many assess as an attempt to detonate of the United Nations and the creation of a new international organization under the command of the American president. Invitations for three-year participation in the work of the Committee, whose Charter was recently signed in Davos, addressed leaders, not states. Trump did not put it on the list Aleksandar Vučić, so, as several times during the last months, he showed personal animosity towards the President of Serbia.
The Peace Committee was originally conceived as a mechanism for political stabilization, economic reconstruction and resolution of the humanitarian crisis in Gazi. However, in order to privatize world peace and establish a parallel system of global governance, Trump has extended his peacemaking ambitions to all conflicts - the work of the United Nations.
Trump has often been known to criticize the UN for "empty words" which, unlike him, "don't solve wars". As a proven opponent of multilateral cooperation, by freezing funds and boycotting the work of many UN agencies, he practically undermined this world organization in every way. The establishment of the Peace Committee as a potential replacement for the UN is the latest landmine placed in the global field of international relations. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warns that the World Organization is threatened with "inevitable financial collapse" due to the withdrawal of the US, which contributes 22 percent to the UN budget. America currently owes the regular budget of the UN 2,2 billion dollars, another 1,9 billion for active peacekeeping missions and 528 million for former peacekeeping missions.
Trump's idea is for his Board to speed up the second phase of the Gaza peace agreement, which involves the disarmament of Hamas and the establishment of a transitional Palestinian National Committee administration made up of 15 theocrats, without the participation of representatives of Islamist groups. Since a ceasefire deal was signed in October, Hamas has controlled about half of the Strip's territory, but is demanding that 10.000 of its police officers be included in the new administration. That request, contrary to the expectations of the US and Israel, further complicates an already complex enough situation. Trump demands that Hamas and other armed groups immediately surrender all heavy weapons, while a special commission would register and deactivate personal weapons, but no agreement was reached on the mechanisms of this operation. Hamas maintains that a serious political process on Palestinian statehood must be opened, and weapons should be under the jurisdiction of the State of Palestine.
The problem also concerns Israel, whose prime minister is firmly against Palestinian independence and believes that the new phase of the agreement concerns only the demilitarization of the Strip, not its renewal.
Behind everything is the fundamental pillar of Trump's foreign policy - profit. He sees the whole world as a big real estate investment market, the business on which he made his billions in New York, so it is clear that his guiding idea is not permanent peace in the Middle East. If he were thinking about peace, he would not have appointed former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of the most hated figures in the region for his role in the US aggression against Iraq in 2003, to the Executive Board.
WHO ARE YOU?, AND WHO IS NOT ON THE PEACE COMMITTEE?
Of the leaders who responded, many have their own political or business interests. Among them are the presidents of Argentina and Paraguay, the monarchs of the Gulf, the leaders of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, as well as the president of Belarus and the prime minister of Hungary. The Turkish president and the Israeli prime minister are also there - which hints that the Committee is a new arena rather than a forum for stabilization.
Those who are most concerned, the Palestinians, are not in the Board, whose general director is the conservative Bulgarian politician Nikolay Mladenov. The Palestinians therefore talk about another form of occupation and remind that not one of the 20 points of Trump's peace from the first phase has been implemented on the ground.
Russia effectively rejected the invitation, even though Vladimir Putin said the Board could use $1 billion – the price of a three-year membership fee – but only from Russian funds frozen in the West. The Chinese have not officially declared themselves, but can anyone think that Putin and Xi Jinping would participate in the work of the Committee in which Trump has granted himself almost absolute powers?
Several European countries, including Britain, France, Greece, Slovakia, Norway, Sweden and even Italy, thanked for the invitation. Also Canada and New Zealand. Apart from the USA, not one of the four remaining permanent members of the UN Security Council is on the Committee. After consultations between the president and the prime minister, Croatia announced that it "highly appreciates" Trump's invitation, but that its accession is not feasible. "There was a big risk of consent and it's good that Croatia removed that risk because by joining... Vito Corleone's endowment, Croatia would directly participate in the deconstruction of international institutions and the UN," commented political analyst and professor Anđelko Milardović. Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob confirmed that Trump's invitation was rejected because they do not want the Committee to replace the UN, but also because of "uncertainty about its competences, as well as because it does not support a two-state solution between Palestine and Israel."
The project to rebuild the Palestinian Mediterranean enclave should raise 90 billion dollars and would certainly bring lucrative profits, so it is no coincidence that the President of the World Bank and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner are on the Executive Board. The board is a triumph of corporate logic. Gaza is a mega investment. In the Belt, more than 70 percent of all housing units were destroyed, and the infrastructure is almost non-existent. The Trump business family is counting on all of this to build a "Gaza Riviera" that should compete with the Cote d'Azur.
Financial support is necessary from a diverse society of Middle Eastern despots, Latin American vassals, Central Asian dictators and problematic European autocrats, right-wingers, nationalists and populists, all of whom membership in the Board is an opportunity to confirm loyalty to the tenant of the White House, counting on having preferential access to the award of lucrative contracts for their construction, energy and technology companies.
TRUMP REMEMBERS
There would be a place for Vučić, but he couldn't make it to Trump or the American in Davos, so he must have been annoyed by seeing the central position at the Charter signing ceremony that Trump assigned to the President of Kosovo, Vjosa Osmani, whom he gently caressed on the hand. In vain, the local regime media, trying to ease the pain of the wounded vanity of their editor-in-chief, commented that Mrs. Osmani "squeezed to the front row". They could know that such events have a prearranged and very precise standing schedule. America will find a way for the rich countries of the Gulf to pay Kosovo one billion dollars for membership in the Board.
The document was also signed by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, which only means that Trump's investments are going to Albania and that Belgrade can no longer count on the Trump administration's benevolent approach to solving the Kosovo problem. Albin Kurti confirmed that the Kosovo Security Forces will participate in the International Stabilization Mission for Gaza, under the mandate of the UN and in accordance with Trump's peace plan.
Serbian officials hoped for everything from "Trump the Serb". They were rooting for their adopted son, Richard Grenell, to become Secretary of State. Instead, they received a more than unpleasant message from Trump's former special envoy for relations between Serbia and Kosovo: side with America and abandon the European path. Trump does not forget Vučić's attempt to enter the Republican donor meeting in Florida in May 2025, and he recently declared that Serbia was preparing to steal his votes in the 2024 elections and that Elon Musk prevented that action.
Vučić's wound was further salted by the new American Law on the Prosperity and Democracy of the Western Balkans, which is critical of the Serbian authorities and announces sanctions for corruption. Then the Congress adopted the Law on the Evaluation of Discrimination against Ethnic Albanians in the Preševo Valley.
While Serbia sinks into diplomatic isolation, Vučić tries to present that he is satisfied that Trump did not invite him. He says that the Committee further divided Europe, but he thinks much more about how to try to settle personal gaffes that the American does not forgive him.
The Peace Committee is not an institutional alternative to the UN, but a project of Trump's vanity that is a threat to international cooperation. Serbia can be satisfied that it was not among the thirty countries that agreed to support Trump's order of chaos that divides the world. Vučić, out of negligence, did his country a favor.
