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View all search resultsAnalysis: Joining Trump’s Board of Peace may be Prabowo’s biggest foreign policy blunder
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Peace gambit: President Prabowo Subianto (right) shakes hands with United States President Donald Trump on Thursday, Jan. 22, at the Board of Peace launch event during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. (AFP/Fabrice Coffrini)
P
resident Prabowo Subianto sprang another foreign policy surprise, or a blunder depending on how one looks at it, by joining the Board of Peace which United States President Donald Trump launched last week as part of his Gaza peace plan.
The President is one of only a handful of head of states or their representatives who signed up to the board at its launch on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Other countries represented were Hungary, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Argentina, Pakistan, Kazakhstan and the United Arab Emirates
Typical of Trump, the event stole the show in the prestigious and high-powered annual business gathering in the Swiss hill resort. Prabowo’s maiden speech in Davos, in which he gave a rosy picture of Indonesia before global investors, got drowned out by the noise that came with the launch of the controversial board.
If this is considered a blunder that many foreign policy scholars have claimed, then it is the biggest one that Prabowo has committed, because of the unknown but likely dire consequences at home and abroad.
Critics say the board undermines international law and overrides the work of the United Nations; it lacks Palestinian involvement; and it confers too much power on its chair, who is none other than Trump, even going beyond his presidency, which ends in 2028.
The worst part of the deal is that it makes no mention of an independent Palestine state as one of the board’s objectives. This is hugely problematic for Indonesia, which has long and persistently campaigned for the creation of a sovereign nation for the Palestinian people.
It is so controversial that many other foreign leaders, including those from traditional US allies in Europe, declined to join the board.
