How Boardroom Diplomacy Could Reshape Peace in Middle East

The symbiosis of business and politics is nothing new. Nobody is surprised when we hear about lobbying, privatization, or public-private partnerships. But the world evolves, and so does this symbiosis. What began as business influencing politics from the outside has gradually moved inward – from corporations shaping policy through lobbying, to private consultants and firms being embedded in state institutions, to business figures now sitting at the table where ceasefires and peace conditions are negotiated. What we are witnessing now is the further, starker blurring of public and private in one of the domains thought to be exclusively the preserve of states: peace and security governance. Understanding this shift is what will help future responsible business leaders to navigate through our rapidly changing world. 

Backchannels, discretion and transactions

To do so, we need to look more closely at who is currently in charge of the major diplomatic initiatives. As expected, the United States is involved in many of the world’s major negotiation processes, including in conflicts where its own role is far from neutral. What is striking, however, is not American involvement per se, but who it chose to empower with the negotiating task. A group of private individuals, business figures with close ties to Trump himself, like Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, are attempting to broker arrangements ranging from oil passage through the Strait of Hormuz to the reconstruction of Gaza. And from what we know, the logic driving these processes is less diplomatic than transactional. A preference for backchannel bargaining, executive discretion, and transactional problem-solving over usually slower, more accountable multilateral processes is visible with every new conflict, as exemplified with the negotiation attempts in relation to the Iran war. 

The presence of private-sector actors in this context should not be seen in isolation from what happens in the broader field of peace and security governance, which is being redesigned according to the corporate logic. One of the starkest expressions of this is the recently established Board of Peace (BoP), born out of UN Security Council Resolution 2803 on the Gaza Peace Plan, but quickly reframed by Trump as a ‘pragmatic’ alternative to the United Nations for managing conflicts globally. It proclaims itself a new international organization with wide membership, but on closer inspection, its governance architecture resembles a private corporation.

“Like a proper board meeting”

The BoP has a central leadership layer that sets strategy and an executive tier that handles operations. Decision-making is delegated to specialized units run by key figures – again, Jared Kushner, a real estate developer and CEO of Affinity Partners; Steve Witkoff, also from real estate; Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management; Ajay Banga, formerly of Mastercard and General Atlantic – who come directly from finance, investment, and private equity. Kushner has made it clear that the BoP will be run differently from established international institutions. At its inaugural meeting in February 2026, he declared: “We tried to structure this meeting like a proper board meeting, like we do in the private sector, where we have all the preparation, we get the right people together.” He was not speaking metaphorically.

The BoP’s funding model reinforces this resemblance. Reports suggest that countries may need to contribute up to one billion dollars to secure a stable seat, which introduces a logic in which influence appears to be linked to financial contribution. And at the apex sits its Chairman for life, Donald Trump, who decides who gets in, who holds power, and how the institution evolves – appointing executive leadership, holding veto authority, shaping succession. This design is suited more for a founder-led company but is, to say the least, surprising for a multilateral institution governing global peace and security.

Taken together, these features – the personnel, the architecture, the funding logic – represent a game-changing trajectory: the corporatization of peace and security governance, in which business involvement has moved from the margins to the center, and the institutional forms are following.

Peace packaged as a product

Do we have anything to worry about? If this constellation delivers more streamlined and efficient outcomes, why not embrace it? For several reasons: there is much more at stake here than a managerial logic of efficiency and results. When peace and reconstruction are treated as projects to be optimized, they risk becoming entry points for disaster capitalism –  the deliberate exploitation of moments of collective trauma to push through radical free-market restructuring that populations would never accept under normal circumstances. These opportunities usually accrue to a small group of actors who wield capital in contexts where the lives and futures of millions depend on who benefits from which contract, and who holds the power to decide how societies transition toward peace. And if peace begins to look like a product and an international organization like a corporation, the question of who gets to own and distribute peace becomes very acute.

This is a reason, among many others, why geopolitical fluency should matter for future business leaders.

At HEC, we are committed to preparing responsible leaders, people who make conscious choices about how the world should function. Responsibility begins with the capacity to diagnose change; to recognize when a geopolitical shift raises fundamental questions about complicity, legitimacy, and harm, and not simply treat it as a new environment to adapt to. Not every geopolitical reconfiguration should be read as a business opportunity. Some should be read as a risk, be it legal, reputational, or ethical. Engaging with institutions like the BoP through private contracts in conflict and post-conflict, or reconstruction settings may appear commercially rational in the short term, but what needs to be taken into consideration is the possibility that these arrangements may foreclose the future of entire nations for the sake of private gain.

Thus, business leaders need to know how to make informed decisions, namely, who to cooperate with, who not to, and on what terms. They need to understand the shifts in global politics and international law well enough to recognize when governance structures, public or private, are not contributing in ways which benefits the affected populations. 

The rise of boardroom diplomacy is already reshaping how conflicts end, how territories are rebuilt, and who gains from both. Understanding these dynamics is a must for the next generation of leaders. They will not only need to navigate new constellations of global power but must make their own responsible choices about how our common futures are built.

For a more detailed analysis of the Board of Peace by Assistant Professor of Law Julia Emtseva, go to Völkerrechtsblog, the academic blog on all matters of international public law and international legal thought.