Former president of Ireland Mary Robinson has questioned how Ireland or “any self respecting country” could consider joining Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, calling it “a delusion of power” by the US president.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland on Monday, Mrs Robinson pointed to the fact that there was “no mention of Gaza” in the charter.
The charter states the board is an international organisation that “seeks to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict”.
However, when Mr Trump unveiled the board at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, most of the United States’s western allies stayed away, partly because Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko were invited to join.
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Additionally, the board’s charter, which names Mr Trump as its chairman, states that “he shall separately serve as inaugural representative of the United States of America”.
Mr Trump cannot be fired from the Board of Peace except for incapacity by a unanimous vote of the executive board and he will designate his own successor, who will take over even if he is forced out. States will join the Board of Peace for three years but a donation of $1 billion can buy them a permanent seat.
“It’s not a board of peace. It’s a board of power of one person. The chair for life is president Trump. He disinvites if he wants to,” Mrs Robinson said on Morning Ireland.
“He has not invited any country from sub-Saharan Africa. That’s the continent that’ll have the largest population in the world in 2050, ignored completely,” she said.
“It’s a delusion of power, which is where president Trump, I think, is now. He’s had the power of the US unfettered, within the country and outside ... It’s gone to his head.”
Asked whether the UN should be replaced, Mrs Robinson said it should not be replaced but that it “does need to be reformed”.
“The security council reflects the power balance in 1945, not our multipower world,” she said.
Mrs Robinson said the UN was “still doing a lot of work, including in Gaza” but the people of Gaza were still suffering “so much” and yet there was no mention of this in the Board of Peace charter, she said.
“The fact he bullies and disinvites ... He has become power obsessed now, and that is very dangerous for the world. But it doesn’t mean the whole rule-based system is gone. It needs support,” Mrs Robinson said.
“We need to make sure the rules-based system survives this power-crazy man,” she added.
Asked about the second fatal shooting this month in Minneapolis, Minnesota, amid a major crackdown in Minnesota by federal immigration agents, Mrs Robinson said she had closely followed the tragedy of those two deaths and that we may be seeing “an inflection point”.
“Trump and his administration have used a barrage of lies to muddy every scene ... Everything is now lies upon lies. They’re not supposed to be believed, they’re supposed to just confuse people. But they’re no longer confusing people, because they’re looking at the videos. This is a very serious moment when there is no truth and people know it.”
Asked whether she agreed with the use of the word “fascism” by some people to describe the direction the United States is heading in, Mrs Robinson said: “I’ve certainly seen the elements that built up fascism in Germany. The elements are there. There’s no doubt about it.”
