The Bipartisan War on Elbridge Colby
Hawks from both major parties lashed out at the confirmation hearing for Trump’s nominee for top military strategist.
It sure looks like the Trump administration is trying to make a grand bargain. At the same time that President Donald Trump has been pushing hard for a Russian-Ukrainian peace deal, Russia has been carrying messages to Iran on Trump's behalf.
After all, the younger generation of conservative foreign policy thinkers believes the United States is overcommitted to Europe and the Middle East and should focus more on Asia. Trump has nominated the leading intellectual voice of that camp, Elbridge Colby, to be undersecretary of defense of policy, overseeing U.S. military planning worldwide.
Colby, who wrote the first Trump administration's National Defense Strategy, is no anti-establishment peace dove. Chinese media describes him as "a long-time China hawk." At his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, he called for increased military spending.
But he has also been arguing for years that endless wars are leaving the U.S. military unprepared for the threats that matter. Colby warned at the hearing that "we could find ourselves in the worst possible outcome, like losing a war," and argued that "there's a kind of recognition in one part of the collective brain of the American system that this is a reality, but the behavior hasn't actually adapted yet."
The hearing itself turned out to be proof positive of Colby's theory that the American system is unwilling to learn. Republican and Democratic senators alike threw a collective temper tantrum against the idea that the U.S. has to choose its battles abroad. Even as they pumped up the threat of America's enemies, they made it clear that they didn't want to be told that Washington's resources are limited.
"We cannot simply pivot our attention and resources from one threat to another. That is an approach the Obama administration tried and it did fail," Sen. Roger Wicker (R–Miss.) complained.
Sen. Jackie Rosen (D–Nev.) asked how "taking our eye off the ball anywhere" would affect American security, and what message it would send "to China regarding American resolve to back democracies against brutal dictators."
Wicker and Rosen both attacked the Trump administration's stance towards Russia and Ukraine. So did Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D–Ill.), who claimed that "Trump is in the middle of a capitulation, not a negotiation." Rosen and Duckworth both asked Colby to confirm that Russia was the aggressor against Ukraine.
Colby told Duckworth that he did not want to say anything that would upset "delicate diplomatic negotiations," although he later told Sen. Mazie Hirono (D–Hawaii) that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is "a factual reality that is demonstrably true."
At some points, Colby went on the offensive. Rather than his camp representing reckless appeasement, he argued that the hawks were being "cavalier" with American power. "You need to be strong to get peace, but if we're going to put American forces into action, we're going to have a clear goal, going to have an exit strategy that's plausible. That doesn't mean inaction," he said.
At other points, however, Colby tried to appease his critics. He told Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) that an Iranian nuclear bomb would be an "existential threat" and that he would be willing to go to war to prevent it.
Colby had argued in a 2012 debate about war with Iran hosted by the nonprofit Center for a New American Security that "containment and deterrence [of Iran] is tough. It's not a great option, but it's doable." Colby argued that "the only thing worse than the prospect of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons would be consequences of using force to try to stop them."
That clip was resurfaced earlier this month by the Jewish Insider. Over the past month, anonymous Republicans have waged a whisper campaign to portray Trump's nominees as soft on the Middle East and even hostile to Israel's interests. Many Trump administration allies have blamed Cotton for privately leading the efforts against Colby.
At the confirmation hearing, Cotton tried to ensure that Colby would not prevent Trump from going to war with Iran. For all his militant enthusiasm, though, Cotton shied away from actually spelling out what he wanted, and danced around the word "war" with euphemisms.
"Will you commit to providing the President with credible, realistic military options to stop Iran from going nuclear?" the senator asked. "To be more precise, those credible and realistic options are more than simply saying we can give Israel some bombs and they can take care of it."
Colby said he would.
Curiously, during Cotton's interrogation, Colby seemed to soften his position on China. He said that the United States did not have an "existential interest" in defending Taiwan, only in "denying China regional hegemony."
Colby previously argued that Taiwan is "the canary in the coal mine—a strong indicator of how far the United States would go to defend [other countries] against China. If China were able to suborn Taiwan, the U.S. and allied defense position would be substantially compromised, and U.S. credibility seriously diminished. For these reasons, subjugating Taiwan is very likely China's best next step toward its strategic goal of regional hegemony."
In a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in 2022, he argued that the fall of Taiwan would pave the way for Chinese world domination.
Responding to Cotton's questions at the Tuesday hearing, Colby explained that his view has changed because of "the dramatic deterioration of the military balance." He warned that Taiwan is not invested enough in its own defense, "so we need to properly incentivize them" and called for the United States to "avoid precipitating a conflict" with China in order to buy "time and space to be able to rectify this problem."
Despite all the political backlash—or perhaps because of it—the Trump administration has not backed down from Colby's nomination. In fact, Vice President J.D. Vance showed up at the hearing to defend Colby in person.
"He has said things that, you know, frankly, alienated Democrats and Republicans. He's also said things that I think both Democrats and Republicans would agree with," Vance proclaimed. "You need people who are doing to tell you the truth, who are going to look you in the eye, who are going to disagree sometimes—amicably, of course, but actually be willing to look you in the eye and have an important conversation—who you can trust to tell you what they actually think, agree or disagree. That's the kind of person that Bridge is."
