The Bipartisan War on Elbridge Colby
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
Article from Reason.com
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