Elbridge Colby, President Donald Trump’s pick to serve as under-secretary of defense for policy, faced extensive questions about the United States’ role in various foreign conflicts and theaters on March 4, as senators took up his nomination.
Colby, who has served in a variety of foreign policy and national security advisory roles both in and out of government over the past two decades, has argued for better prioritization in the U.S. national security strategy, including shifting focus away from Europe and the Middle East and toward rising strategic competition with communist China.
Speaking with members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 4, Colby assessed that the United States is no longer a militarily dominant force and the center of a unipolar world order the way it may have been after the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War era….