President Donald Trump (R) is looking to stand up a Board of Peace that would seek to broker peace deals between belligerents and between soon-to-be belligerents. In many respects, this BoP would supplant the UN, which is famous for its failure to create peace and infamous for its failure to maintain any peace in which its peacekeeping forces are involved.

Some nations, like putative allies France and UK are reluctant to join it. Enemy nations like Russia and the People’s Republic of China also are reluctant to join.

UK and France…worried about joining an organization subject to Trump’s whims that could give equal status to authoritarians such as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A Board of Peace, whether or not led by Trump, may or may not be a good idea, but the plaint that the BoP would give folks like Putin an equal status is just silly. He, and the PRC’s President Xi Jinping, already have equal status in the UN via their positions as permanent members of the Security Council and their veto authority in that body.