When I first met Elbridge Colby (known as Bridge), he was a young analyst at the Center for Naval Analysis, where I served as a senior advisor. CNA is the US Navy and Marine Corps think tank and one of the “Federally Funded Research and Development Centers,” along with the RAND Corporation, MITRE, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab and the Institute for Defense Analysis among others, that support the Department of Defense. Much of their work is classified, at times highly classified.
These federally funded research centers attract some of the best and brightest thinkers and analysts in the United States. Among them, there are two distinct types. One group enjoys the work and has no desire to work anywhere else; sometimes they will move from one to another, but rarely outside the federally funded research orbit.
The second group, of which Bridge is an exemplar, are no less talented. But they seek broader horizons. Often they will move to other think tanks, where they can promote their ideas without having to obtain the often time-consuming approvals that characterize any effort to publish while working as a government or federally funded research center employee.
As Bridge’s occasional mentor at CNA, I knew that his days at the organization were numbered, though he very much enjoyed his work. He never flaunted his aristocratic pedigree in the East Coast elite. His grandfather was Bill Colby, who directed the CIA in the mid-1970s. He attended the Groton School, among whose more famous graduates were President Franklin Roosevelt and Secretary of State Dean Acheson. He also attended school in Japan, which may have influenced the young man’s views about Asia in general and China in particular. He then went on to Harvard and Yale Law School, though like many elite law school graduates, he has not practiced law.
After law school, he held various positions in the State and Defense Departments and the intelligence community, and spent time on the staff of the Coalition Provisional Authority that the Bush administration created to govern Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s fall. He then joined CNA for three years, moving from there to the non-partisan but generally liberal-leaning Center for a New American Security, which had been founded by Michele Flournoy and Kurt Campbell. Both had served in the Obama administration; Campbell also served as the key Asia hand in the Biden administration and later as Deputy Secretary of State. Colby, very much a realist in matters of national security, worked at Center for a New American Security for three years before joining the first Trump administration.
It has been alleged that in 2016 Colby was interested in joining Jeb Bush’s campaign but was frozen out by “neoconservatives.” I served as co-national security advisor to Jeb Bush’s campaign and have no such recollection. But if there was skullduggery of this type at a lower level, it should come as no surprise that Colby, ever the realist, resents anything that smacks of an activist internationalist foreign policy.
As a deputy assistant secretary of defense under James Mattis, Colby directed the production of Trump’s 2017 National Defense Strategy, which argued that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had weakened the United States and left it increasingly vulnerable to threats from Russia and especially China. Colby’s views were not solely his; after all, Mattis, who had fought in Iraq, approved Colby’s draft strategy, otherwise it would not have seen the light of day.
When Bridge left the Pentagon he founded his own think tank with another former Trump official, Wess Mitchell, who had been Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs. It was there the Bridge became increasingly vocal about the need to let America’s European and Middle Eastern allies spend more on their own defenses so that the United States could concentrate on dealing with the increasingly more powerful China.
The White House has nominated Colby to be Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the third most senior position in the Pentagon and the post once held by Michele Flournoy under Obama. Some hard-liners in the Senate, as well as supporters of Israel, oppose his nomination because he appears to have been somewhat casual about Iran’s nuclear program, and because of his sharp tilt toward Asia—a position first articulated in the Obama administration. Others oppose him because of his close ties to the Republican hard-right, notably Vice President JD Vance and Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, and his appearance on Tucker Carlson’s streaming show.
Bridge had a difficult time at his confirmation hearing, with Democrats prompting him to acknowledge that Russia invaded Ukraine, a position counter to Trump’s. Colby did not answer; if he had done so, whatever answer he would have given would have landed him in trouble: either with those horrified by Russia’s invasion, or the President who nominated him and who refuses to acknowledge that reality. He also waffled a bit on the issue of defending Taiwan, again following White House predilections.
Bridge is likely to be confirmed to what is a powerful Pentagon role. But it is not all-powerful. Ultimately it is the White House, especially the current White House, that determines policy. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is unlikely to counter whatever comes down from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and his decisions, not Bridge Colby’s, will determine DoD policy. Bridge, like all his colleagues in the Department, will salute smartly and follow orders, as all under secretaries and other top military and civilian officials have done in the past, if they wished to keep their jobs.
