Donald Trump once brought into existence something he called the Board of Peace, initially centred on his proposal for a final solution for the Palestinian question. To that end, he assembled a handful of partners, each of whom wrote a generous cheque to purchase his goodwill — and promptly announced to the world yet another “peace” of his making, another step toward a future Nobel Prize. The group featured some profoundly dubious figures, though that alone would hardly distinguish it from the ethical standard set by its own architect.
The project envisioned transforming a deliberately razed territory into a Riviera of warm waters on the eastern Mediterranean. As a tourist venture, it was not without a certain vision. It had, however, one irritant — as the euphemism now goes: the land happened to be inhabited by a population that had lived there for centuries. The area’s population density ranked among the highest on earth. It should be noted, in fairness, that Israel’s meticulous policy of intensive Palestinian liquidation — in Gaza and the West Bank alike — pursued as a disproportionate response to the terrorist attack it suffered, had been doing its part to ease that demographic inconvenience.
The arrival of Trump 2.0 left the world disoriented, and Europe most of all — a continent whose posture toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had long been a showcase of impotence and moral cowardice. Having assumed collective guilt for the extreme-right Nazi genocide, Europeans adopted a studied timidity, unwilling to challenge Israel for fear of being branded antisemitic — a label wielded as a cudgel against anyone who dares question the exceptionalism of the Jewish state. With successive American administrations of every political stripe held captive by domestic lobby pressure, Europe chose early on to simply defer to Washington.
The Board of Peace has since evolved, in keeping with Washington’s rhetorical momentum, into an institution ostensibly dedicated to performing the miracle of global peace under the self-appointed leadership of Donald Trump himself — whose else? On the margins of Davos, the American president staged a diplomatic show, casting about for the most accommodating partners he could find.
For once, Europe hesitated. Stung by the tariff offensive and the brazen claims over Greenland, the European Union initially kept its distance from Trump’s project. But necessity has a way of bending the will, and in the end, with the classical logic that accommodates power over principle, ethics was quietly filed away. The Union discreetly let it be known that it would participate as an “observer” of the Peace Council.
For anyone possessing even a rudimentary literacy in international relations, the Board of Peace is nothing more or less than a body plainly designed to supplant the United Nations in practice, if not yet in name. Trump intends to impose his own architecture on the world order and delegitimise a global organisation that, without imperial supervision, has served as a meaningful platform of representation for 193 countries. It’s true that the UN is facing a stalemate—especially when the permanent members of its Security Council, notably the United States and Russia, treat it à la carte. But it is what we have, and it bears remembering that there is far more to the United Nations than its Security Council.
In all of this, where is Portugal? A familiar pattern repeats itself. Our country—whatever America may be—remains bound to a simple posture: never to take a stance that might risk displeasing Washington. It’s not even about confronting the United States; it’s about trying to guess how America might react—if it even noticed our existence—should we dare to think for ourselves, in any way even mildly dissonant with the “American friend.” One could call it the doctrine of preventive subordination.
It is not new. In 2003, Portugal hosted at Lajes the summit that sealed the invasion of Iraq — a press conference that entered history as an infamous monument to Western servility. The host was the Portuguese government of the day. The UN had been bypassed; international law ignored. And Portugal proudly provided the stage for that violation, in the illusion that diplomatic visibility might compensate for the abandonment of principle. History has not been generous in its verdict.
More than twenty years on, Portugal has now announced that it too — alongside a handful of European states — will serve as an “observer” of Trump’s Peace Council. For a moment, I harboured the naïve hope that Lisbon might, out of some minimal sense of dignity, have recalled that the Secretary-General of the United Nations — the organisation Trump so openly demonises — is himself Portuguese. But no. The neck bent once more. Following the embarrassment of Portugal’s conduct in the Venezuela affair, Portuguese foreign policy has revealed, under this government, what it truly is — or rather, that it does not exist at all, and amounts to nothing more than an art of evasion and a servile deference to Washington.
At Lajes, there was at least the excuse of naivety. Today, there is none.
Francisco Seixas da Costa
Portuguese ambassador
(The original version of this text was published in the Portuguese daily newspaper "Publico", 21.02.2006, https://www.publico.pt/2026/02/21/mundo/opiniao/doutrina-subordinacao-preventiva-2165444 )
