No. of Recommendations: 4
Who is Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby?
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/08/elbridge-...Elbridge Colby spent the last several years in Washington making a name for himself as an experienced, restraint-minded foreign policy leader eager to focus the U.S. military away from Europe and toward the Indo-Pacific.“He is pissing off just about everyone I know inside the administration,” said one person familiar with the situation. “They all view him as the guy who’s going to make the U.S. do less in the world in general.”
“He has basically decided that he’s going to be the intellectual driving force behind a kind of neo-isolationism that believes that the United States should act more alone, that allies and friends are kind of encumbering,” said a person familiar with the Trump administration dynamicshttps://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5237883-senate...Notably, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), an outspoken advocate for projecting American military strength throughout the world and supporting NATO allies, voted against Colby.
McConnell voiced concern about what he called Colby’s desire to prioritize U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific over those in Europe, Ukraine and the Middle East.
Several Democrats voted for the nominee, including Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sens. Mark Kelly (Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), swing-state moderates who sit on the Armed Services panel.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a member of the panel, warned Colby that his previously stated view that that U.S. should tolerate and attempt to contain a nuclear-armed Iran was contrary to Trump’s policy.My parsing of the above articles has generated a few conclusions.
1)Colby considers Europe of lesser strategic importance to the USA.
Could it be because of Europe demographic decline & shrinking industry plant?
2)Colby wishes to shift emphasis to Asia. Likely due to China's economic strength [Yes I know China is having economic issues and a huge national debt. China's economy is better and larger than Russia's] & ambition to be a bigger world player.
3)Colby's containment policy rather than meddling & intervention is in opposition to past bipartisan international meddling in the world. Thus he is labelled an isolationist with neo-isolationist views.
The US does need to stockpile weaponry and munitions due to a small defense industrial plant. The US still has not significantly ramped up 155mm artillery round production. And has nearly depleted it naval missile supply bombarding Houtis rebels. One wonders how this is possible with a nearly trillion dollar defense budget? Rhetorical question great amounts of money has been wasted on expensive boondoggle weaponry systems. So which are still continuing.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-stockpiles-mi...By the numbers: US missile capacity depleting fast
Our industrial base isn't keeping up with the pace of weapons transfers to Ukraine and Israel 