Peace’s Last Supper

To address both the war and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Donald Trump announced that he would create a ‘Board of Peace’. The ratification ceremony held in Davos, Switzerland, is captured in an official photograph released by the White House on 22 January 2026.

Portrayed by the American executive branch as an historic new era of cooperation, the project forms part of a carefully calibrated narrative aimed at positioning Trump for a future Nobel Peace Prize. The initiative has sparked controversy, not least because of reports that states must make financial contributions to obtain a permanent seat, which suggests transactional diplomacy, while the inclusion of illiberal regimes such as Azerbaijan, Belarus and Saudi Arabia raises doubts about the symbolic coherence of an institution officially dedicated to promoting peace. The idea that Trump could embody the figure of the peace maker alongside regimes for which international law remains an abstract concept may appear somewhat ironic – unless taking such liberties with international law is what Trump means by ‘the free world’.

Trump casts himself in a more overtly messianic role; it is difficult, when looking at the photograph, not to recall the Renaissance representations of the Last Supper, with a seated central protagonist performing a solemn, seemingly decisive gesture, framed by a horizontal alignment of attentive followers, in a ritualised staging that lends the moment a quasi-sacral aura.

All the more so given that there are, here, no fewer than twelve ‘apostles’ standing behind Trump. From left to right: the minister of the prime minister’s court of Bahrain, the prime minister of Pakistan, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, the president of Kosovo, the minister of foreign affairs of Morocco, the president of Argentina, the prime minister of Armenia, the president of Mongolia, the foreign minister of Turkey, the former prime minister of Bulgaria, the president of Azerbaijan and the prime minister of Hungary.

The similarities between the United Nations logo and that of the ‘Board of Peace’, as well as its blue background, are striking and send a clear message: Trump is appropriating the visual codes of the very international institutions he is intent on undermining and ultimately replacing. Meet the new team!

The play of glances, almost exclusively directed at Trump, speaks to the deference these states show to the man who, in the name of a mission of international pacification, is sketching out a world order in which ‘peace’ may indeed exist, but at the cost of a general acquiescence to the MAGA worldview. Something no one is even attempting to hide. The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared on that day: ‘We are here today because of President Trump’s vision’. And there we were, thinking their purpose was to stand with the people of Gaza, and all those caught in the crossfire of war, in Palestine as in Israel.