Why the Fight Over Elbridge Colby is So Important
If Colby is approved, he will reshape Republican foreign policy.
Anthony Constantini
February 28, 2025
_WHAT’S HAPPENING_
Elbridge Colby, President Donald Trump’s nominee for Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, has sparked a divide within the GOP between the foreign policy hawks who oppose him and his dovish supporters.
Colby — who served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the first Trump administration — has made a name for himself as a fierce China hawk. However, he advocates for countering China while reducing American involvement in regions like Europe and the Middle East, a position that has frustrated staunch Iran critics like Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR).
_THE FACTS_
→ Since Donald Trump left office in 2021, Colby has been active online in supporting an aggressively anti-China stance.
→ Colby has focused particularly on Taiwan, urging the island’s leaders to start spending more on defense.
→ He has also urged Europe to increase their defense budget and offers blistering criticism for allies who refuse to up their spending.
→ Colby has also dismissed the notion that Iran should be a focal point of American foreign policy, writing in 2010 that even if they built a nuclear bomb, they could still be contained.
→ It is that 2010 essay that has now drawn criticism from GOP hawks who see Russia and Iran as the most significant threats to the United States.
→ Sen. Cotton has refused to say whether he would support Colby’s nomination, remarking that he would see if Colby stands with Trump’s “declared priority” of stopping Iran.
→ However, not only was Colby picked directly by Trump, but he has received heavy backing from those closest to the president, including in an op-ed personally written by Donald Trump Jr.
→ Vice President JD Vance has also defended Colby, saying Colby has “consistently been correct about the big foreign policy debates of the last 20 years.”
_INSIGHTS_
Usually, under-secretary positions don’t receive much attention from the general public. But the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy is extremely important, as the officeholder sets the strategy adopted by the entire military. The position is also a top adviser to the Secretary of Defense.
As Daniel McCarthy commented in Compact Magazine, if Colby is successful, he will occupy a key “middle” rung of American policymaking between the top decision makers and the voters, where real and long-lasting policy is made.
Colby being able to shape defense policy would end the decades-long dominance of hawks in GOP foreign policy, who have placed regime change in Iran at the top level of import since the 1979 Iranian revolution, and help finally complete the “pivot to Asia” commenced during the Obama administration.
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