POLITICO: How a new Russia-China-US network could work

A seemingly far out idea pinging around Washington this week would have the U.S. stand up a new “Core 5” group of countries — including China and Russia — bringing traditional adversaries closer and offering a sharp contrast with the existing G7, POLITICO reports.

While that might have once seemed like a nonstarter, some observers noted that it does have a Trumpian ring to it.

A person who served in the White House in the first Trump administration, granted anonymity to discuss closed-door conversations, said the idea of a C5 (the U.S., China, India, Japan and Russia) was not completely shocking.

“Nothing around a C5 or C7 was discussed, but there were certainly conversations that the existing bodies like the G-structures or the U.N. Security Council weren’t fit for purpose given today’s new players,” the person said.

The idea for the group reportedly came up in a longer, unpublished version of the National Security Strategy that the White House published last week.

But national security practitioners said they could see the C5 make sense for this White House.

“This aligns with how we know President Trump to view the world, which is nonideologically, through an affinity for strongmen, and through a propensity of working with other great powers that maintain spheres of influence in their region,” said Torrey Taussig, who served as director for European affairs on the National Security Council during the Biden administration.

She noted that Europe did not appear in the theoretical C5, “which I imagine would lead Europeans to believe this administration views Russia as the preeminent power with the ability to carry out its own sphere of influence over Europe.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth referred to a historic “G2 meeting” between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in November, sparking alarm in Congress. And the National Security Strategy itself signaled a shift away from traditional European allies, which it said faced “civilizational erasure,” and toward a new focus on the Western Hemisphere.

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