The Duran Podcast - Board of Peace, Putin invite and US attempt to replace UN

Episode Date: January 25, 2026

Board of Peace, Putin invite and US attempt to replace UN

All right, Alexander, let's do a quick video on the Board of Peace, the replacement to the United Nations with Trump as chairman of the board, and the invitations that have been sent out to join him on the Board of Peace. And one of the invitations was sent to Russian President Vladimir Putin, to the Russian Federation to join the Board of Peace. There's about a billion-dollar entry fee. I'm not sure how it works. I don't think we've been given exact details out of a billion-dollar entry fee works. I don't know if it's paid up front. I don't know if it's paid after three years I've read. Anyway, who knows?

A billion dollars. That's how much the Board of Peace is asking to eventually join. And Putin said, sure, absolutely. One billion dollars. We're in. You can just take that money from our frozen assets. Okay, Alex, Andrew your thoughts. Well, I mean, it's absolutely typical Putin, it's very typical of the Russians. The Russians are not going to be hugely keen to be involved in this Board of Peace, because this Board of Peace, the way it's being structured now, it's increasingly, it's becoming increasingly obvious that it's not really about Gaza, it's not even really about the Middle East at all. It's more about setting up a club of countries, all friendly to the United States. That will be a kind of alternative.

I mean, that's how it is increasingly looking and that is how it's being increasingly described. Now, the Russians are very, very keen on defending the UN system because, of course, in the Security Council, the UN Security Council, they have vetoes, they have the right of veto. And they don't want anything to replace in any way, in any form, the UN Security Council. and the UN structures, which will be a substitute to that, which will be controlled by the United States, where Russia might find itself isolated, as it often does in the UN Security Council, or even not isolated at any rate in the minority and where it does not have a right of veto. So the Russians probably not very keen on joining this board in the first place.

At the same time, they don't want to annoy Trump. They don't want to say a categorical no, because what do they gain by that? There is massive dissension currently between Trump and the United States and the Europeans. The Russians are trying to, I mean, first of all, they're enjoying it to the extent that they can. They're trying to sort of work it up a little. they don't want to appear to reject something, which might get them a little closer to the Americans, make Trump happier, and more angry with them that he might otherwise be. So they come up with this proposal.

They say, look, fine, we will certainly join. In principle, we are fine with this. But there's an entry fee and the entry fee. Obviously, the simple way to pay it is to pay it out of the assets, our assets, which have been frozen. There's assets which have been frozen in the United States, which would cover it, assets which have been frozen in Europe. It throws the ball straight back into Trump's court.

Because of course, in order for the Russians to pay the billion dollars out of the frozen assets to the Americans, the assets have to be unfrozen. I mean, that's the thing that people need to understand. You can come up with arrangements so that the assets are unfrozen, the Russians pay the money, and then they're frozen again, something like that. I mean, you could come up with that sort of an arrangement. But, of course, if you do that, if you do that, then you are formally admitting that the assets are Russian and that it is the Russians and the Russians alone who have the right to dispose of them

because you're in effect acknowledging their property. And even if that's only limited to the Russian frozen assets on the territory of the United States, it obviously has bearing on the Russian assets which are frozen in Europe. if the Americans ever do this, agree to this, then the Europeans can kiss goodbye to any ideas that they can ever lay their hands on these assets in the future. At that point, their legal position, which is already basically massively undercut, will completely collapse. What do you make of the Board of Peace? The Europeans are rejecting it, Norway, the UK, I believe the UK is going to reject it, or they've signaled that they've rejected.

Okay, so Norway, the UK, France, I believe Germany has also said no to it. Russia has taken the position. We'll study it. I believe China has received an invite. What do you make of this whole thing? Well, it's not the first time the Americans have tried to do this. Joe Biden also tried it. Absolutely. I mean, he set up what was called the, League of Democracies, if you remember, which included well-known democracies like Angola and Saudi Arabia. But, I mean, an attempt to create alongside the UN a kind of separate, you know, group of countries that will, you know, rubber stamp, whatever it is that the US wants. What is unusual about this one is that Trump did want America's adversaries, if you like, Russia and China to participate.

So in some ways, it was a more sophisticated try and by appearing to anchor it in the Gaza issue. I mean, you know, this is all supposed to be connected to Gaza, though nobody can really see how. And nobody can really imagine that an organization of this guy, and call it an organization, a group of countries brought together in this way is. really about Gaza and the ceasefire there. Anyway, it was done in a slightly more sophisticated way or attempted sophisticated way than the Biden attempt was, which by the way melted away almost immediately. I mean, Biden's attempt never really got off the ground. And it doesn't look as if this one either will, because the Europeans are staying away, because they're angry with Trump for all kinds of other reasons, and they're nervous about getting too close to him

over the Middle East, Gaza, and of course they've got their own quarrels with him over Greenland, and those sort of things. So the Europeans are staying away. Doesn't look as if the Russians are going to be involved. Doubt that the Chinese ultimately will be involved either. It's another try to do this and of again it's failing. One way or the other, the Americans need to understand at some point that the UN for all its flaws is what is. Other countries, the big countries, are too invested in it to walk away from it. And especially at a time when the retrogressional, from the United States has increasingly been that international law, which is very bound

up with the UN system. International law doesn't count. The United States makes all the decisions. Trump decides everything with the only constraint being his own morality. All of that is going to make countries around the world, not just adversaries of the United States, but friends. of the United States, very, very unwilling to join a grouping of countries which might lend support to that kind of thinking by the United States when there is already the United Nations and the UN Charter and its various institutions which they're much more comfortable with and which they, in the case of the Russians, want to support. Yeah, the weird part is that the United Nations is there.

It exists and it's located in the United States. It's in New York. And the United States already exerts a tremendous amount of influence and control over the United Nations. I mean, the Secretary General of the United Nations, for the most part, is pretty much a U.S. puppet. Lavrov has even hinted as much, right? Labadoff has even said that the Secretary General is pretty much doing the bidding. of the United States. I mean, you have the Security Council. I think it's the Security Council that at least China and Russia, they want to safeguard. It's that body that functions to their

advantage. But all the other parts of the United Nations are pretty much on tools of the United States all the way down to the UN's location. And the U.S. has denied visas recently of diplomats wanting to go to the United Nations, which they shouldn't be doing. So I mean, I don't understand the thinking behind this from Trump, at least with Biden's Board of Democracy thing, he didn't really push it so much. It was virtual. It was like a virtual Zoom meeting. And he wasn't asking for fees or anything like that. It was more like, let's jump on a Zoom call, everybody, and let's talk about democracy. Hey, Saudi Arabia, jump on a Zoom call and tell us about your democracy. I mean, it was laughable. That's Biden. That was the Biden administration.

administration laughable. But what the Trump administration is doing is even more bizarre because they're trying to extract money from countries. And they are promoting the Board of Peace as some sort of governing body. Of course, with Trump as the indefinite chairman. They even said that his chairmanship of the Board of Peace may even extend past 2028. And the part that really bothers me, personally it bothers me, is that they're using. Gaza and the situation in Gaza to dupe people to joining this Board of Peace. I mean, it's disguised within the Gaza peace plan, but what it really is is a replacement for the United Nations. I would just quickly add that you have a particular knowledge of the United Nations because,

of course, your father, who was a diplomat, served there. So you have that particular knowledge of the UN system. You're absolutely good. Correct. Anybody who follows and tracks the United Nations can see this. The United Nations is based in the United States, in New York. It's almost, it's heavily, largely funded by the United States. The United States has enormous influence. I mean, not just influence. I mean, practically control over many of its executive and administrative bodies. It basically, as you rightly say, picks the Secretary General. The Secretary General has to be approved by the UN Security Council, but again, the United States, largely because he controls the Secretariat, is able to exert colossal

influence to get its person appointed Secretary General. And whenever we have Secretary Generals who dissent and cause trouble, well, they immediately run into all kinds of problems that the Americans throw up, and sometimes they just can't, they can't, I mean, you know, they find it impossible to do their work. The only agency, the only body of the United Nations, which the United States cannot control, is the Security Council, exactly as you said, because the Russians of the Chinese have veto rights there. And the Security Council is important. And, an awful lot of the diplomacy that takes place in the world is actually carried out there. But the US nowadays is never satisfied with 90% control of an organization.

What they basically want is total control of an organization. The UN will always fall short of that because there is this veto power. and because in the General Assembly, you will always find dissenters as well. So, of course, they come after the UN. There's constant criticism of it in the United States, and that's why you get this board of Gaza set up in this way. The board is, and you're right to point this is, it's an incredibly sordid arrangement. I mean, it's using the Gaza crisis with all as many horrors, which we've discussed in

many programs and which others have discussed in a great length to. It's trying to leverage that crisis to create an alternative UN, which is deeply disturbing and I'd say unethical. And of course, you have this entry for $1 billion, which all of these different countries are going to supposedly pay, and they're going to have to repay maybe now, or in three years time, or perhaps, Perhaps they will have to pay them every three years, a billion dollars each. And to whom? Exactly. I mean, that's the other thing that isn't clear to the United States, to the Gaza board itself, whatever that means, whoever runs it, the chair, of course, is Trump.

To Trump himself. I mean, where this money goes to, I mean, it doesn't just look like a, you know, a, you know, sordid setup to set up an alternative UN, it also looks like a shakedown as well. And as I said, it's very sordid and very ugly. Joe Biden's League of Democracies was absurd and ridiculous. And as I said, it failed almost instantly. But at least it didn't have this ugly side that this thing does. Yeah. Just a final comment question, I guess, is what's the Trump foreign policy team doing?

I mean, this stuff, it just seems to me like they're sitting in the White House and they're coming up with these ideas. And they don't really think them through. And then they implement them. Trump posts it on true social and then they run with it. But it seems as if no one is actually taken a step back and saying, wait a minute, everybody. Yeah, sure, board of peace. sounds great. Trump chairman of the Board of Peace sounds great. And yeah, a billion dollars entry also sounds great. But it doesn't seem like there's anyone there to say, you know, we don't need this. It sounds great as we're brainstorming and kicking around ideas.

But this is not how geopolitics or foreign policy or international relations or international law or anything. This is not how it works. And we already have the UN and we already control much of the UN. We don't need to waste our time with this stuff. And at the end of the day, this is a time-wester in a way for everybody. It's a distraction. It's a diversion. And it's a time-waster.

And it's never going to get up off the ground. At least I don't think it will. If it does get up off the ground, then, okay, what can I say? But if you don't have China, Russia, India, Brazil, if you don't have these countries involved, much of Europe looks like they're not going to be involved. If they're not going to be involved in this, then what's the point? Well, what is the point indeed? And of course, it has one immediate negative, which is that trying to set up this thing,

leveraging it on the back of the Gaza crisis, is going to distract and confuse and muddle or real serious attempts to try to address the problems and causes of the Gaza crisis. So, I mean, that already makes this extremely dubious and dubious, but you're absolutely correct. I mean, the Trump administration, it sometimes tries to put together a foreign policy concept. You could just see some outlines of it in the security strategy review that came out a few weeks ago, you know, spheres of influence, focusing on the Western Hemisphere, giving up hegemony, doing all of that. But at the same time, all of that is undercut by these bizarre improvisations and the extraordinarily reckless way in which they conduct international relations. It's seemingly on the fly. So, I mean, we've just been through a crisis over Greenland,

which, by the way, is unresolved, which blew out of nowhere. It doesn't. It doesn't It doesn't seem as if the United States was working to any, or this the administration was working to any particular plan. We've had an extraordinary episode with Venezuela, which is also unresolved, by the way, and also looks ugly. I mean, whatever your feelings about Venezuela and the government there, and however it turns out, the way it was done is going to alarm Latin American countries. and we already see that the Brazilians are now starting to register their unhappiness and they're talking to the Russians about it and all of that. But, I mean, it makes a bad impression.

And I know people say bad impressions don't really matter, but they do mount up over time. And when there is no coherent framework that explains them, the impression is even worse. and people start saying to themselves, the United States is never the solution now. It's always the problem. It's the rogue elephant, which we need to stay out of its way and which we need to find workarounds.

All right, we will end it there. The durand.com. We are on XRumble telegram and also on substack. You will find the link to our substack in the description box down below. And also go to the Duran shop, pick up some merch,

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