Elbridge Colby and the Future of GOP Foreign Policy

Senators should back Colby as a clear-eyed prioritizer who can chart the Trump-Hegseth agenda and guide DoD down a viable path away from the broken legacy of primacy and the false promise of isolation

This week saw the publication of a revealing article by Semafor tracking the latest developments in the nomination battle for Elbridge Colby as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Where does one even begin? Here is my unofficial, long rant on the subject as someone who has followed the arc of this storyline intently since 2021 with the publication of Elbridge Colby’s book "The Strategy of Denial."

There are many overlapping elements in this article and if it is accurate, the debate is "coming to a head" in Washington. I live in California and know little of DC backrooms, let alone Senate machinations. But I have worked in politics since I was 19 years old, and the greatest lesson I have learned about politics is to always separate signal from noise.

The core element that must not be obscured in the noise surrounding intrigue and Senatorial haggling is a generational shift away from the era of Bush-Romney foreign policy, or primacy, and towards a form of restraint. This foreign policy shift has unnerved many old guard leaders, and united power centers with disparate reasonings and various allegiances into a reactionary struggle against a change they have yet to fully grasp let alone trust.

Nowhere is this policy battle more prominent than in debate over the epicenter of neocon crusades in the 2000s: the Middle East. Iran, Israel, and to a lesser extent Palestine and Syria. The topics are familiar and unresolved, for the GOP is facing a long delayed reckoning of its former stances. The base of the party has already moved on from the previous era; the halls of power less so. The currents, so prominently whirling around the issue of Ukraine aid in 2024, are now crisscrossing over the issue of Iran and what a Trump Pentagon stands for vis-a-vis Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Hovering over this is Trump himself, a dealmaker and an avowed admirer of Nixonian "madman theory", both of which he has used to great effect. But there is a simple explanation here as well.

The Senate cannot contain Trump, his presence is too gravitational and his triangulations too nimble and fluid to steer by committee. So it seems they have set their sights on the Pentagon, and specifically, the role of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, as a nomination where they can exercise influence and assert prerogative, and perhaps attempt to check the advance of the party towards new ideas and new policies. This article paints dark fears in the minds of Wicker, Cotton and others, of a new isolationism, an abandonment of Israel, a tolerance of a nuclear Tehran, and so on-a list which must be described as highly speculative and nightmarish to begin with.

No one can deny that the New Right, when compared to the neocons, is restraint oriented. This is neither surprising nor dangerous. Now there are voices pushing the New Right's restraint all the way to what may be debatably called isolationism; I don't question the sincerity of those who worry that full-blown libertarianism would risk Israeli security in the face of a near-nuclear Iran. But here we have to take off the stark, even straw-manning approach of some advocates and deal in the strategic nuance that will define who wins this GOP turf war. America is not going to abandon Israel. But Israel's interests are best served by a strong America, and primacism is not the way to achieve a strong America.

Indeed, primacism, certainly in its 2000s format, is done for. If voices in the Senate long for it, they ought to have tended to industrial policy long before 2025. Neither the budget, nor the industrial base are in a position to once more adopt a pre-emptive war doctrine. And as for electoral considerations, I don't see a single constituency on either side of the political aisle calling for a new ground war in the Persian Gulf.

But isolationism, often a canard, but on occasion a real talking point, is no solution. I don't need to waste breath here re-treading the well-covered ground of warnings against the impracticalities and strategically myopic nature of a Fortress America.

With these two unenviable policy options clearly set for disappointment, promising at once either hubristic overextension or conceited retreat, the Senate must recognize that the solution is staring them in the face: prioritization. And there is no more deft advocate, no more capable articulation, no more balanced vision for prioritization that is at once in the national interest and in the true long term interest of our partners around the world (including Israel) than Elbridge Colby.

We should be clear: Colby is not a neocon primacist. If confirmed I would bet he is not going to go lead DoD's policy abroad to the far corners of the world seeking out monsters to destroy and quoting Madeline Albright. But he is also *not an isolationist.* His critics know this, and facing a nearly inexhaustible string of thoughtful policy discussions outlining a sustainable US policy for Great Power era rivalry, they have latched onto the Iran subject as a supposed weakness in his worldview. But no amount of splicing commentary out of context nor injecting vague fearmongering about Israeli security (for which he has always been a supporter) is going to alter the reality that Bridge is a friend to Israel. And no amount of Senatorial pining for primacism can alter the fact that Iran's worst nightmare is an America, led by the likes of Trump, Hegseth, and Colby, who knows which battles to pick, and when. Trump's first term is a masterclass in dealing with Iran.

As for Colby, he has repeatedly held up Israel (along with other proactive American allies and partners like Poland) as exemplary: global friends who neither seek nor demand a nannying US foreign policy, but rather desire to be self-sufficient partners in our quest for security and national interest.

In a broader sense, Colby has for the last several years lead the very conversation and debate that too many others on the Right have fled from: he has addressed the Iraq syndrome of a GOP base fed up with Forever Wars, while at the same time orienting policy discussions around the only nation on the planet capable of establishing regional hegemony over the core economic region of the world: China. In this he has been in alignment with President Trump.

Colby warned of Great Power Competition and of the relevance of military invasion as a threat for our time in his 2021 book, published months before Russian tanks rolled over the Ukrainian frontier. At the time, some think tanks decried his work as anachronistic: they felt that invasions by major states were a bygone concern. Well, they were wrong, and his warning was right on time; their Fukuyama optimism is now a byword for delusion.

I believe that Colby will again prove prescient. 2027 is fast approaching, and there is no world less safe for Israel, for Europe, or for any friend of America than a world in which a militarily ascendant China has broken out of the First Island Chain, seized Taiwan, choked global semiconductor supply, established regional predominance over Asia's economy on a continental scale, and delivered a nationalistic victory for communism unrivaled in the history of the theory in practice or propaganda.

If the Senate is genuinely concerned about an America relevant globally and strong for our allies, they will back Colby's nomination as the kind of clear-eyed prioritizer who can help chart the Trump-Hegseth agenda, and help guide DoD down the only viable path away from the broken legacy of primacy and the false promise of isolation.