The decision by the United States to withdraw from 31 organisations within the United Nations system, alongside President Donald Trump’s initiative to establish the Board of Peace, may trigger another phase in the crisis of universalism. What we are witnessing is an attempt to construct a hierarchical model of multipolarity in which one pole shapes alternative institutions to serve its own interests. For the United Nations, as the core platform for peacebuilding and global development, this constitutes a structural challenge, writes Candidate of Political Sciences Lilia Romadan. The author is a participant of the Valdai – New Generation project.
The updated United States National Security Strategy and National Defence Strategy adopted in December 2025 and January 2026 point to a profound reappraisal of the White House’s foreign policy premises. During Donald Trump’s second presidential term, Washington’s self-conception has shifted—the role of global hegemon is being replaced by the concept of a great power in a multipolar world, albeit the strongest one. At the same time, a clearly delineated sphere of influence has been articulated, with emphasis on the Western Hemisphere and an explicit reference to the Monroe Doctrine. As Russian analysts note, the new American doctrinal documents place power—military, but not exclusively so—at the centre as an instrument for achieving any desired objective.
Within the broader evolution of the White House’s global strategy, US participation in the United Nations has also come under review. Universal institutions, as elements of the global system, are viewed by the Americans as financially burdensome, over-bureaucratised, and insufficiently effective. Donald Trump stated this bluntly from the rostrum of the UN in September 2025.
A crisis of confidence in the universalist model is evident. It is worth recalling that the United States was its principal architect, stood at the origins of the United Nations, and historically acted not only as its largest donor, but effectively as one of the political guarantors of the stability of the entire post-war international order. Washington’s withdrawal in January of this year from a substantial number of economic, social, climate, and peacebuilding structures cannot fail to affect the United Nations’ operations. Among the bodies from which the Americans have chosen to distance themselves are the Economic and Social Council and its regional commissions, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, and the Peacebuilding Fund, among others. These entities ensure the implementation of United Nations projects “on the ground”. Without the financial backing of its largest donor, the world organisation is likely to face not only a serious deficit of resources and expertise, but also, importantly, a loss of political influence that cannot be rapidly restored. Notably, the United Nations budget for 2026 has already been significantly reduced, amounting to approximately 3.45 billion US dollars.
More broadly, the United States’ exit from an entire segment of the United Nations ecosystem demonstrates that participation in global institutions is no longer regarded as an obligatory attribute of great power status. The very notion of collective responsibility is thus called into question. If the largest participant signals readiness to act beyond universal frameworks, other states are incentivised either to follow suit or to seek alternative arrangements. The result is a paradox: universalism remains “on paper”, while the world increasingly operates according to the logic of classical realism, in which the strongest dictate the rules of the game. This, in turn, risks transforming the principal forum of multilateral diplomacy into a relic of a previous world order, overshadowed by emerging formats.
Attempts to reform the United Nations through the prism of the current American administration appear ineffective, while the construction of a parallel architecture based on “its own rules” is seen by the White House as a means of strengthening US positions in the emerging multipolar order.
The Charter of the Board of Peace, signed on the margins of the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 22, advances a fundamentally different institutional philosophy of peacebuilding. Whereas the Charter of the United Nations is grounded in the principle of sovereign equality, the Charter of the Board of Peace enshrines a hierarchical and, in essence, personalised model of governance. The central figure is the Chair, endowed with exceptional powers—from interpreting the Charter and adopting resolutions to forming institutional bodies, appointing a successor, and inviting new member states. Unlike the United Nations Security Council, where the veto power belongs to the victorious powers of the Second World War, decisive authority within the Board of Peace is effectively vested in Washington alone. This reduces transparency and, to some extent, weakens international checks and balances. Within the Board of Peace, majority decisions endorsed by the Chair may be adopted without guarantees that the vital interests of individual members will be taken into account. In the long term, the impossibility of membership without US approval, the closed nature of membership, and the lack of veto mechanisms create the risk that the Board of Peace may evolve into an instrument of ad hoc coalitions, where efficiency is achieved through procedural flexibility. Notably, the organisation’s name in English is rendered as “Board of Peace”, rather than the more familiar “Council”, which aptly reflects the business-like spirit of the “Trump 2.0 administration”.
The financial provisions of the Charter are no less revealing. The possibility of permanent membership in the Board, contingent upon a contribution of 1 billion US dollars, establishes a precedent of “paid peacebuilding”, whereby access to decision-making is determined not by universal legitimacy, but by economic capacity. This marks a fundamental departure from United Nations bodies, where financial contributions are significant, yet their scale is not formally linked to the institutional rights of legally equal member states. Taken together, these features transform the Board of Peace into a flexible, but weakly institutionalised mechanism capable of ensuring rapid decision-making. For the United Nations, this signifies not merely the emergence of a competitor organisation, but a shift in the very logic of peacebuilding—from collective responsibility to managed, selective formats, which in the long term intensify fragmentation of the world order.
Several systemic risks for the United Nations arise from the creation of the Board of Peace. First, institutional rivalry in the field of peacebuilding is likely to emerge. The Board’s peace initiatives will, in all probability, draw resources, attention, and political trust towards themselves, particularly in post-conflict settings where swift decision-making is required. This diminishes the role of the UN as the central coordinator of international efforts. Second, amid the disintegration of a unified normative space, the contemporary international security architecture, constructed by the United Nations over decades, may erode. Third, the personalisation of authority within the Board of Peace carries the risk of selective and politically motivated application of peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction principles. Efficiency may be achieved within compressed timeframes, but at the cost of procedural guarantees and multilateral oversight.
One might even describe this as multipolarity without a common arbiter, where universal institutions give way to ad hoc coalitions.
The United States’ withdrawal from United Nations structures and the establishment of the Board of Peace may constitute a bifurcation point for the entire system of global governance. The United Nations will either manage to adapt to a world without substantial support from one of its principal architects—the United States—by redistributing responsibility and enhancing the role of other centres of power, or it risks losing its status as the central multilateral platform. Donald Trump’s Board of Peace is not merely another international organisation. It lays claim to the role of a symbol of the new quarter-century, in which universalism yields to pragmatic “clubs of interest”.
