As national security practitioners and patriotic Americans, we are pleased to see an outstanding strategist and defense policymaker nominated to be the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Elbridge “Bridge” Colby has spent more than twenty years working in the Department of State, Department of Defense, and the intelligence community, as well as in various national security positions at a number of think tanks.

While serving as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development, Mr. Colby was the primary author of the 2018 National Defense Strategy and was the primary Defense Department representative for President Trump’s 2017 National Security Strategy of the United States. Since leaving the Defense Department, Mr. Colby founded a think tank and wrote The Strategy of Denial, a book length treatment on how the United States must understand that its primary foreign national security threat is China and how the United States military must prioritize deterring and if necessary defeating Chinese aggression, even over other lesser threats and interests.

Mr. Colby is one of the leading defense strategists of his generation and without question the most influential defense policy thinker in over twenty years. His vision of a Department of Defense that puts the interests of the American people first fully aligns with the views of President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

For far too long, the United States has employed the Department of Defense—and the men and women of the U.S. military—to engage in activities that were not central to 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 Department of Defense has spent much of the post-Cold War era expending resources and American lives in conducting operations that are tangential to U.S. interests.

During the same period, the Department of Defense has neglected to build the forces it needs—ships, planes, and munitions—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.

All of this must be reversed for the United States to deter China and other lesser but still significant threats to the American people.

Mr. Colby is clear-eyed about what needs to be done. He understands that the United States must rebuild its military, husband the resources that it has, and most importantly not throw away the lives of the men and women in uniform who serve our nation if we are going to secure the peace that is required for Americans to prosper.  

Mr. Colby agrees with Secretary Hegseth that America’s number one adversary is the People’s Republic of China and that the Defense Department 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, demolish 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 Colby shares these priorities and is ready to execute the Commander in Chief’s agenda. He is the single best person to implement President Trump’s and Secretary Hegseth’s policies within the Department of Defense and ensure that American lives and resources are used judiciously against prioritized threats.

As proud American defense professionals, we stand with Bridge in this historic endeavor.