With a single signature, US President Donald Trump brought the post-WWII-system based on state sovereignty to an end, replacing it with a “transactional diplomacy” that merges military force with financial influence. He seeks unilateral judicial legitimacy under the banner of the “Peace Council” launched in Davos, an initiative which increasingly appears to be his own “American United Nations." All this came days after the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president from the heart of Caracas and before the USS “Abraham Lincoln” headed to the Arabian Sea to confront Iran.

The most telling expression of US intentions is the abduction of Nicolás Maduro, an operation which inaugurates a new era of “criminalizing sovereignty”. Washington used the “non-recognition loophole” to classify Venezuela as a “criminal organization” and invoked Article 51 of the UN Charter, justifying self-defense by designating the “export of drugs” a biological operation equivalent to an armed attack. It then relied on the Ker–Frisbie doctrine, which justifies trying any person before a US court regardless of the nature of their arrest, even in case of illegal abduction. This legal veneer is the death of sovereignty as more and more is delegated to Washington’s judgment.

The gilded emblem of the Peace Council. (X)

Trump's outlook is also petty, tied to a logic of geopolitical revenge. Days before launching the “Peace Council,” Trump announced that he was no longer bound to think “only about peace,” in a message to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, in which he expressed his anger at not being awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, saying “even though I ended more than eight wars, I can now think about what suits the United States.” His turn came into sharp relief as he threatened Europe with tariffs of up to 200 percent on some goods.

The signing of the “Peace Council” charter in Davos coincided with a massive military movement of the US fleet toward the Gulf region and the Arabian Sea. Here is the hard stick which accompanies the new “American United Nations."

From the balcony of the "Peace Council," the world stands before a new system, marked by legal fluidity and military rigidity, one that refuses to let national borders stand in the way of American power, favors a diplomacy of revenge, and militarizes the economy to impose a distinctly American “peace.” It privatizes geopolitical cooperation, and makes possible imperial dreams through the transactional framing of business deals—from Greenland to northern Syria.

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