Infantino Invented a Peace Prize for Trump and Killed a Red Card - Now Trump Wants Him to Run the United Nations

Donald Trump has found his candidate for the world's highest diplomatic office. According to the president, FIFA President Gianni Infantino should become the next Secretary-General of the United Nations. The White House says Infantino is respected around the world and has the unique ability to bring people together. Most recently, that talent helped drag an entire World Cup into controversy. Just imagine what it could do to world peace.

The friendship between the two men is still new, but it's built on remarkable generosity in both directions. Last December, Infantino handed Trump the very first FIFA Peace Prize, an award that had never existed before and was apparently created for the sole purpose of hanging it around the neck of a man the Nobel Committee keeps passing over year after year. A custom-made prize for a recipient who couldn't get one anywhere else. Then, during the summer, the phone rang. Trump asked Infantino to overturn the red card shown to U.S. striker Folarin Balogun, and Infantino did exactly that, breaking with every rule in the middle of the tournament. Belgium still won the match 4-1 and mocked Trump's dance moves afterward. The favor didn't change the result. But the message got through.

Now comes the reward. Paolo Zampolli, Trump's Special Envoy for Global Partnerships, explained why, and it's hard to top his reasoning. Only President Trump, he said, could come up with such a brilliant idea. There is, after all, a certain similarity between the two jobs. The United Nations has 193 member states. FIFA has more than 200. Infantino knows how to manage them. One has 193, the other 211, so where's the difference? That one organization is supposed to prevent wars while the other schedules soccer matches apparently counts as nothing more than a rounding error.

It's the worldview of a man who sees everything as a marketplace, where every marketplace simply needs a manager. Think that way long enough and eventually peace starts looking like an organizational challenge. Sponsorship deals and reconciliation between nations begin to blur together because both involve negotiations and signatures. But wars don't end because somebody is a good moderator, and ceasefires aren't sponsorship packages. The mistake is already built into Zampolli's claim that the two jobs are alike. It's the same mistake running through this administration, confusing power with administration.

One number in this story is completely honest, and it's the only one. Infantino earns about $6 million a year at FIFA. The U.N. Secretary-General earns roughly $418,000. Apparently world peace pays about one fourteenth of what world soccer does. That tells you which job the world actually values more. It's hardly surprising that Infantino is already seeking a third term at FIFA and has remained silent about Trump's proposal. Six million reasons speak for themselves.

His path to the job would be blocked anyway. Portuguese Secretary-General António Guterres leaves office at the end of December, and his successor must first survive the U.N. Security Council, where five permanent members each hold veto power, before winning approval from the General Assembly. Infantino would be competing against serious candidates, including former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. People who have run governments and inspected nuclear facilities, against a man whose main qualification is scheduling kickoff times. On top of that, he'd run into the quiet understanding that this round is expected to go to someone from Latin America, a region that hasn't held the position in more than 30 years.

Trump himself makes it clear this isn't really about the United Nations at all. It's about pushing against it. He cut U.S. funding, pulled America out of the World Health Organization, UNESCO, and the Human Rights Council. He even created his own Peace Council, which many see as the beginning of a rival institution. When someone empties out the house first and then nominates his friend to be the caretaker, he isn't planning to move back in. He's handing over the keys. Infantino wouldn't be the reformer Zampolli describes. He would be a grateful man sitting in a hollowed-out office, and gratitude is exactly the quality Trump values most in the people around him.

In the end, an unexpected witness steps into the story. Sepp Blatter, the former FIFA president brought down by a corruption scandal, is now calling for Infantino to be removed from office. When that man is the one raising the warning flag, there's not much left to say about the candidate's qualifications. Maybe Trump's proposal is more honest than he intended. It reveals what he believes the United Nations is still good for - one more gold trophy sitting on the shelf of a man who never believed he needed it in the first place. The Peace Prize is already there. Now all that's missing is the rest of the world.