Who Is Elbridge Colby?

Republished from RedWingPost.Substack.com

Elbridge Colby, President Trump’s nominee as the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for policy, begins a questionable confirmation process today with a confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Senator Tom Cotton, the Senate Republican Conference Chairman, has repeatedly expressed suspicions about Colby’s defense views. Cotton — along with other Republican Senators uncertain about Colby such as Joni Ernst of Iowa, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, and Mike Rounds of South Dakota — is more of what we used to call a hawk when it comes to U.S. defense posture, defense spending, and backing the Russia-Ukraine war.

Heartburn for Hawks

Colby’s comments that the U.S. should “redirect its attention from threats in the Middle East, such as countering Iran and its proxies, to focus on China and its growing influence in Asia” are giving Cotton and Senate hawks heartburn.

With seats on both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, Cotton holds outsized sway on the process. Both Senate Committees must approve Colby’s nomination.

Colby and Cotton’s views on the Russia-Ukraine war and NATO don’t exactly line up, as The Epoch Times explained:

In 2023, when Cotton supported cluster munitions for Ukraine, saying they were necessary “for Ukrainian forces to defeat Putin’s invasion,” Colby was more critical of the move, suggesting the United States appeared to have “set expectations for the maximal goals” while only “actually prepared to deliver on the latter.”

Additionally, while Cotton promoted Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO, Colby raised questions about the value of that move and later said it was “not some massive triumph that altered the geopolitical landscape.”

Colby Served in Trump’s First Administration

Colby served as President Trump’s deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development at the Pentagon in 2017-18, where he helped to shape Trump’s 2017 National Security Strategy and the Defense Department’s 2018 National Defense Strategy.

Colby proposed in 2023 to shift U.S. “focus away from the Middle East and toward the possibility of conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific region” and in 2010 said about Iran:

Containment is certainly not the best outcome—successfully preventing Iranian acquisition is. But if the only way to do that is to embark on a probably futile attempt to militarily suppress Iran’s nuclear program, or, God forbid, invade Iran, the hard work of containment offers a least bad option.

More Focus on China & Russia

In his position as Defense Director at the Center for a New American Security (“CNAS”) think tank, Colby testified to the Armed Services Committee at its first public hearing in President Trump’s second term about the “rise of China and Russia and the challenges they post to American interests.”

Manhattan Institute fellow/Tablet Magazine deputy editor Park MacDougald has called out Colby’s work at CNAS, “former President Barack Obama’s ‘favorite think tank,’ and claimed that Colby “supported Jeb Bush’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign,” but Vice President J.D. Vance explained:

Bridge has consistently been correct about the big foreign policy debates of the last 20 years. He was critical of the Iraq War, which made him unemployable in the 2000s era conservative movement… He built a relationship with CNAS when it was one of the few institutions that would even hire a foreign policy realist.

Cotton’s Position Unclear

Cotton has underscored his concerns recently on podcasts with conservative commentators Clay Travis and Buck Sexton and Will Cain but just yesterday declined to comment to The Epoch Times.

This comes after conservative activist Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA called Cotton out in February for “sabotaging one of President Trump’s most important nominees.”

Kirk says

What has become very clear to me in recent days is that the base is paying close attention to this confirmation, and there will be political consequences for any senator who stands in the way of the personnel President Trump wants.

After backlash from Kirk and other MAGA conservatives, Cotton had said he would meet with Colby, but hasn’t yet said publicly how he will vote on Colby’s nomination.

Elizabeth Sotallaro

God’s child, Arkansas conservatarian
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