Donald Trump’s long advocated for a reconstituted G8, which is to say for bringing Russia in from the proverbial cold.

He says that all the time, and usually in terms which suggest he believes most people are unfamiliar with recent world history.

“The G7 used to be the G8,” he reminded Mark Carney, at this year’s summit in the Canadian Rockies. “You wouldn’t have a war right now” if Russia were still in the club, he went on.

But there is “a war right now,” and very much contrary to promises he made on the campaign trail, Trump hasn’t succeeded in persuading Vladimir Putin to stop the fighting. Until that war’s over — and even once the shooting stops — the odds of the G7 asking Russia back seem long.

But that’s ok, because Trump can always just start a new club and invite Putin. Call it — and I’m just spitballing here — the “Core 5.”

According to a longer, unpublished version of the latest US National Security Strategy released this week, Trump pondered a so-called “C5” which would include the US, China, Russia, Japan and India, effectively downgrading the UK, France and Germany to something like second-tier power status. (The White House denies this.)

As Defense One, which originally reported on the unpublished NSS, noted, such a body wouldn’t be “hemmed in by the G7’s requirements that the countries be both wealthy and democratically governed.”

I can certainly understand the desire to drop the wealth requirement for any new consortia the US might be inclined to inaugurate, but for history’s greatest experiment in democratic governance to go out of its way to create a new, exclusive club seemingly for the sole purpose of flattering a KGB-trained, kleptocratic, murderous mob boss (in Putin), a reincarnated Mao (in Xi Jinping) and a coyly sadistic ethnonationalist with plain-as-day designs on authoritarian rule (Narendra Modi) seems… I don’t know, bad?

According to Defense One’s account, the proposed C5 “would meet regularly, as the G7 does, for summits with specific themes.” Yes, “specific themes.” Themes like, “How to subdue the populace.” And “Best practices for ethnic cleansing.” And “Militarism for new era.”

Politico, which wasn’t able to verify the existence of the longer plan reported by Defense One, quoted a source who worked in the first Trump White House. “Nothing around a C5 was discussed [during my time], but there were certainly conversations that the existing bodies like the G-structures or the UN Security Council weren’t fit for purpose given today’s new players,” that person said.

Although The White House vehemently denies that any “alternative, private or classified version” of the official NSS exists, the idea of a C5 fits like a glove with Trump’s affinity for “great power” politics and conception of the world as a giant Risk board that can (and should) be divided among strong nations run by strong men (or, in Sanae Takaichi’s case, a strong woman).

Recall that Trump exhibited more than a little childlike jealousy in September, when Modi was seen exchanging hugs with Putin in China just before one of Xi’s elaborate military parades, where the Russian leader was a guest of honor alongside Trump’s on-again, off-again fling Kim Jong-Un.

Who knows, maybe once the C5 gets going, it can invite Kim and, to ensure proper European representation, Viktor Orban and Aleksandr Lukashenko.