Takamasa Ishizuka – DEVNET JAPAN Director
In December of last year, amid reporting on U.S. national security strategy, attention was drawn to the so-called “CORE FIVE” — or “C5” — concept, attributed to U.S. President Trump.
This concept envisions a new forum of great powers — the United States, China, Russia, India, and Japan — five nations that wield decisive influence over the world order in terms of population, military strength, economic power, and technological capability.
Unlike the G7 or the United Nations Security Council, this would constitute a new framework for major-power dialogue. Although the White House has not officially acknowledged the concept, the questions it raises should be received by the United Nations — an institution increasingly losing its effectiveness — as a catalyst for transformation.
The essence of the C5 concept is not merely the creation of a new international forum.
Underlying it is a recognition that the Western-led international order has become rigid, and that existing institutions, including the United Nations, are no longer able to adequately reflect the actual balance of power.
It reflects a realist awareness that the ongoing fragmentation of the world order can no longer be managed through conventional ideals and institutions alone.
Trump’s aim is believed to be the strengthening of relationships with Japan and India — both located in China’s vicinity — to create an indirect deterrent effect within the broader U.S. strategy vis-à-vis China.
At the same time, one can discern an intention to step beyond frameworks centered solely on traditional Western allies, and to relativize the conventional NATO-centered security order by incorporating Russia and China as major powers with their own spheres of influence.
From Russia’s perspective, the appeal of C5 lies not in the institution itself, but in the fact that within a framework of “five great powers,” Russia can assert its position without being unilaterally bound by Western norms.
For China, on the other hand, C5 is not necessarily a framework offering greater freedom.
China has its sights set on matching or surpassing the United States across the military, economic, and technological domains by the 2030s.
Yet what matters most to China is not assuming the responsibilities of a “night-watchman state” that upholds the existing order, but rather maximizing its own economic and geopolitical influence.
Looking back at Japanese history, during the Tokugawa period there existed a system known as sankin-kōtai (alternate attendance).
This system imposed enormous costs on feudal domains, effectively compelling their compliance with the shogunal order.
Power is not merely the ability to overwhelm an opponent; it is also the capacity to impose continuous burdens upon them and alter their patterns of behavior.
Applied to Russia’s current position, the Western sanctions and military aid that followed the invasion of Ukraine have not merely exposed Russian weakness.
Rather, Russia has imposed significant fiscal, political, and military costs on Western nations, prolonging the burden of maintaining their unity.
In this sense, contemporary power is no longer measured by momentary force, but by long-term endurance and resilience.
The coming world order will not be determined solely by cutting-edge technology or the degree of economic integration.
Rather, it will be shaped by the ability to absorb sustained pressure with flexibility, to manage fragmentation and uncertainty, and to exercise cross-domain command over multiple arenas — political, economic, informational, infrastructural, energy-related, and food-related.
The battleground is no longer confined to the military domain.
The very foundations of daily life — politics, economics, information, logistics, finance, healthcare, food, and infrastructure — have become arenas of interstate competition.
To impose perpetual defensive costs on adversaries, and to endure such pressure oneself: this is the essence of the strategic expansion that contemporary great powers pursue.
What, then, should the United Nations learn from this reality?
The forces of international cooperation and solidarity are now widely dispersed.
No single nation can govern global-scale challenges on its own.
Climate change, food crises, infectious diseases, disasters, refugees, poverty, energy, artificial intelligence, and cyberspace — these challenges transcend national borders and have become complex problems that no state can resolve alone.
And yet the current United Nations remains unable to amend even its own Charter — predicated as it is on the power structures that existed at the time of its founding — and has failed to achieve meaningful institutional reform.
Its principal organs, beginning with the Security Council, still bear the deep imprint of the international order that prevailed immediately after the Second World War and can hardly be said to adequately reflect today’s multipolar world.
This does not mean, however, that the United Nations should be dismissed as obsolete.
On the contrary, now is precisely the time for the United Nations to return to its origins.
The preamble to the UN Charter begins with the words: “We the peoples of the United Nations.”
The United Nations was not, at its inception, intended to be merely a union of states; it was designed as an institution to safeguard the future of the world’s people — of global citizens.
From this perspective, the agents of UN transformation should no longer be limited to particular states or leaders. Member states, UN agencies, NGOs, civil society, corporations, academic institutions, local governments, religious communities, youth, and individual global citizens must collaborate on a
challenge-by-challenge basis, building new channels to actively move the United Nations forward.
NGOs and civil society are not mere external supporters of the United Nations.
They are practitioners who are the first to grasp challenges on the ground and who operate in domains difficult for state institutions to reach — in humanitarian aid, education, healthcare, environmental conservation, community revitalization, disaster relief, and peacebuilding.
By utilizing institutional channels such as ECOSOC consultative status, NGOs can actively engage with the United Nations as agents of policy advocacy, program implementation, field reporting, and international cooperation — and this constitutes a vital pathway to UN renewal.
In this light, if the C5 concept represents a realist restructuring of the order led by great powers, then the United Nations must present an alternative: a system of international cooperation grounded in global citizen participation.
The world should not be moved by great powers alone; rather, states and civil society must form multilayered connections, and the world order must be rebuilt through the resolution of challenges on the ground.
This is the new vision of the United Nations that must be articulated.
To restore the authority of the United Nations and to promote the economic development of its member states and the improvement of their citizens’ lives, the UN must undertake a decisive “renewal, deepening, and evolution” (shinka — 新化・深化・進化) of its functions.
Renewal (shinka / 新化) means transforming the United Nations from a conference-centered organization into an action-oriented platform that drives concrete programs.
Deepening (shinka / 深化) means going beyond intergovernmental deliberation to institutionally
strengthen partnerships with NGOs, civil society, corporations, academic institutions, and local
governments.
Evolution (shinka / 進化) means developing the United Nations from a mere symbol of ideals into a
practical global management system that integrates disaster response, healthcare, food security, logistics, education, energy, finance, and digital technology.
A new grand design for the United Nations that can stand alongside the C5 concept is not simply a matter of aggregating the power of great powers.
It requires asking member states to bear their fair share of financial responsibility, while NGOs and civil society launch concrete programs from the ground up, collaborating with national governments, UN agencies, private enterprises, and academic institutions to build up solution-oriented international cooperation.
The United Nations is both a union of states and a public foundation for safeguarding the future of
global citizens. If the C5 concept signals a restructuring of the world order by great powers, then the United Nations must present in response a new path — “global citizen governance” — in which states and civil society participate together.
What is now demanded of the United Nations is not a reaffirmation of ideals, but circuits of action.
Not conferences, but programs.
Not states alone, but civil society.
And an awakening to our identity as global citizens — transcending the boundaries of nationality.
The C5 concept should not be viewed solely as a threat that exposes the limitations of the United Nations.
Rather, it is a vital catalyst — an opportunity for the United Nations to redene itself and evolve into an action-oriented international institution worthy of the global society of the twenty-first century.