Elbridge “Bridge” Colby hasn’t garnered as much media attention as Pete Hegseth or Tulsi Gabbard, but President Trump’s nominee for Under Secretary of Defense for Policy has attracted a surprising amount of controversy.

Yet there’s no question that Bridge Colby is qualified for the job as the Pentagon’s policy lead.

All told, he’s spent more than 20 years working in the Department of State, Department of Defense (DOD), and the intelligence community, as well as in various national security positions at different think tanks.

Bridge served in the first Trump administration as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development, where he was the lead author of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. He was also DOD’s primary representative for the 2017 U.S. National Security Strategy.

After leaving the DOD, Bridge founded a think tank, the Marathon Initiative, and wrote The Strategy of Denial, a book-length treatment on how the United States must prioritize deterring and, if necessary, defeating aggression from China, its primary foreign national security threat.

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In short, Bridge is one of the leading defense strategists of his generation, and, in my mind, the most influential defense policy thinker in over 20 years.

Despite all this, some GOP senators have reportedly offered him a less-than-warm welcome. Specifically, some criticize Bridge for allegedly being a defeatist on Ukraine and ambivalent about the prospects of Iran getting a nuclear weapon.

I don’t speak for Bridge, but I have known him for well over a decade, and I don’t believe that either of these criticisms are valid.

On Ukraine, my understanding is that Bridge certainly wants Ukraine to win. But he also believes that, given the need for the U.S. to focus on China and the absence of a NATO-like security arrangement in the Western Pacific, most of the additional support for Ukraine should come from our European allies.

As far as the Middle East, Bridge has always been a staunch supporter of Israel. I cannot fathom a world in which Bridge is ambivalent about a nuclear-armed Iran. Such an outcome would contradict both American interests and the interests of our regional allies and partners. 

If I know anything about Bridge, it’s that he seeks a Department of Defense that puts the interests of the American people first.

For far too long, the United States has employed the DOD—and the men and women of the U.S. military—for activities that don’t further American interests.

From peacekeeping operations in far-flung theaters, to nation-building among cultures riddled with ethno-sectarian and religious strife, to democracy-building in areas with no history of the rule of law, the DOD has spent much of the post-Cold War era expending resources and American lives in operations tangential to U.S. interests.

During the same period, the DOD has neglected to build the forces it needs in the quantities it needs to deter and (if necessary) defeat an aggressive, expansionistic China. America’s stockpiles of cruise missiles and integrated air and missile defenses are low. Our navy is undersized, and our pilots get too few flying hours.

If the U.S. hopes to deter China and other threats, all this must change.

Bridge is clear-eyed about what needs to be done. He understands that to secure peace, the U.S. must rebuild its military, husband its resources, and, most importantly, not throw away the lives of the men and women in uniform.

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He understands that we must not only build ships, planes, and munitions, but that we must reinvest in the nuclear arsenal and build a missile defense system that will deter America’s adversaries from carrying out a strategic attack on the U.S. or U.S. troops.

In this, Bridge fully aligns with President Trump’s priorities for the DOD.

Bridge agrees with Secretary Pete Hegseth about the threats to America, and he’s written extensively about how America’s number one adversary is China. It’s because of this that Bridge believes the DOD must rebuild and reorient the U.S. military for great power confrontation with China, which is engaged in the largest conventional and nuclear weapons buildup on the planet.

President Trump has pledged to seal our border, take on the drug cartels, restore peace in Europe and the Middle East, and strengthen and modernize our military to make it the strongest and most powerful in the world. Bridge shares these priorities and is ready to execute this agenda.

In short, Bridge Colby is the single best person to implement President Trump’s and Secretary Hegseth’s policies within the DOD and ensure that American lives and resources are used judiciously against prioritized threats.

I have full confidence that the Senate will give Mr. Colby the hearing he deserves and, ultimately, confirm this once-in-a-generation talent.