Trump's Bridge to Nowhere

Elbridge Colby can deflect all he wants, but he cannot properly defend an omnishambles of a grand strategy.

Photo by Romeo Varga on Unsplash

Look, grand strategy is hard, okay? A lot of attempted U.S. grand strategies have been incoherent, kitchen-sink arguments in which everything becomes national security. A few have been more coherent, but often by prioritizing the weirdest stuff imaginable.

The second Trump administration has a national security strategy, but it’s an open question just how much Trump is actually following that script. A president who values unpredictability above all else may lack the psychological capacity to develop any strategy that isn’t slapdash, jerry-rigged, or improvised.

This can frustrate American foreign policy watchers. The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin filed a report from the Aspen Security Forum that reflects the consensus of the U.S. foreign policy community at the current moment:

On the main stage, news about China, Iran and Ukraine was top of mind. But, in the hallways and in the restaurants downtown, much of the conversation turned to a deeper question: how the United States can map out a long-term strategy that allies, and the industries that work with or depend on the U.S. government, can understand and act on. In discussions about artificial intelligence, critical minerals, drones and space, the consistent refrain was that Washington must move faster by fixing how the Pentagon buys things, whom it buys them from, and, above all, how quickly those things can be built and put on the battlefield.…

The administration’s inconsistent trade policy, its unclear endgame in Iran, its uneven treatment of allies in Europe and Asia, and its generally chaotic operating style are making planning beyond tomorrow even more risky, many participants said. Even supporters of the administration’s overall drive to rectify imbalances in the international order admitted there’s no way to predict how it will end up….

Even the architects of the new system concede they are improvising, which means the rules will keep moving.

This brings us to an actual strategist in the employ of the current Trump administration: Elbridge “Bridge” Colby, the undersecretary of defense for policy. The extent of Colby’s influence over U.S. grand strategy has been the subject of considerable debate. The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World has been super-skeptical that Colby the China hawk would be a big fan of the administration’s strategic retreat from East Asia.

Colby recently sat down with the New York Times’ Ross Douthat to discuss and defend Trump’s foreign policy. Let’s check his strategic acumen!

Colby describes himself as an adherent of “flexible realism,” which he elaborates by explaining that, “realism is definitely the major explainer [for foreign policy], especially in stressful or transitional situations.” At the same time, Colby acknowledges that realism is, “not a total explanation of human behavior.” In other words, Colby is a realist unless it's inconvenient to be one.

How well does this hold up in his interview with Douthat? Honestly, not very. Most realists would say that the most important thing is knowing the international distribution of power. Colby brags to Douthat that, “one of the areas where I think I’ve been very consistent is focusing more on the reality of the situation — the structural elements — rather than the rhetoric”

But here’s Colby on the current state of play:

Douthat: What, then, is the structural reality, in terms of the actual balance of power? And how is it different from 2016?

Colby: There’s a couple things, and there are some areas where my own views have changed. I remember having a debate about whether the Chinese economy would ever pass the American economy in nominal G.D.P. — I thought it would — and I think the president deserves tremendous credit for ensuring the growth of the American economy.

You see the United States hopefully pulling away — obviously, there’s investments in A.I. But our problems relative to those of China, let alone other countries, are much more manageable in terms of the structural economic factors.

Douthat: So you’re more optimistic about America’s economic advantages than you would have been eight years ago?

Colby: Yes, I am. I think that’s borne out by the performance. And for those who anticipated it, kudos. That’s one where I’ve altered my view.

Colby is partially correct — the U.S. economy has done pretty well macroeconomically over the past eight years.

Any claim that the U.S. is pulling away from China during this period is delusional, however. This is particularly true on AI. As Rogin noted in his report, “The United States still leads the world in the most advanced AI models, but the margin is now measured in months. Chinese developers are closing it with cheaper, open-weight systems and, American officials and companies allege, by copying the capabilities of U.S. models outright. Meanwhile, China’s advantages are in manufacturing, robotics, energy and the physical applications of AI, where it is scaling faster.”

So right off the bat, Colby’s grasp of where things stand seems off.

He doesn’t help matters by insisting to Douthat that the war with Iran is not “stalemated” despite increasing evidence that Iran’s capacity to hit U.S. targets in the region remains robust. Whenever Douthat raises that point, Colby uses it as a justification to keep attacking Iran rather than acknowledge the, you know, stalemate. Or he says “at least it’s not Vietnam or Iraq,” which is damning with the faintest praise imaginable. The only thing Colby can really say is, “you just wait and see.” Which is exactly what we will have to do.

Then we get to Colby’s theory of how to manage alliances:

I think that’s one thing that’s really important at a structural level that this administration is doing differently, in what is perhaps a tough way sometimes, but also in a rational and common sense way, which is to accurately price the partnership and relationship with the United States, both in terms of access and things like A.I. or energy, but also in terms of leverage things like burden-sharing issues or tariffs, etc.

If I were going to put it in a common sense one-liner, it’s that people can no longer take the United States for granted. And I think there was an element during the era of the international rules-based order when people did take the United States for granted….

My feeling about allies is that you want to reassure allies enough so that they don’t fall apart or in some circumstances defect to the other side, but you want to keep them sufficiently on their toes so that they do their part. That’s just human behavior.

One problem with this is that it cuts both ways. The lack of NATO support for Operation Epic Fury, for example, also reveals that the United States can’t take its allies for granted either.

The bigger problem is that there has been very little reassurance coming from this administration. Colby’s strategic blindspot here is rather significant. Early in the interview he brags, “Measure what the United States and the United States Department of War is doing by actions and not what we call ‘peacocking,’ which I think is really different from the last administration.” But as the exchange below demonstrates, Colby can’t help himself from peacocking and not comprehending why it’s a strategic miscue:

Colby: I think the president, as I understand it, is communicating that the United States needs to be secure and have our interests respected in the hemisphere, and he communicates it in that way.

Douthat: So you interpret the image of the stars and stripes flying up past Hudson Bay as just the Monroe Doctrine?

Colby: Well, I think the stars and stripes should be flying high above anywhere. It’s great. We’re proud of it. It’s 250 years and—-

Douthat: Flying anywhere as a statement of sovereignty or just as a statement of awesomeness?

Colby: Well, it’s certainly awesomeness.

Douthat: What do you mean you think the stars and stripes should be flying anywhere?

Colby: I just think we are, uh …

Douthat: You don’t think it’s reasonable for a proud Canadian to look at that image and say, at the very least, that the U.S. is trying to vassalize us?

Colby: Uh …

Douthat: Because that’s the reaction that I think you’re getting and that’s driving Mark Carney’s speech.

Colby: OK.

That is a Chotiner-level deconstruction of an argument.

Look, I get that Colby is hardly a free agent. He agreed to serve president Trump, which means he needs to defend all of his administration’s policies. The problem is that he winds up contradicting himself and doing a piss-poor job of providing a cogent defense.

I will be curious to see how the Elbridge Colby of 2029 squares his years in government with what he said out of government. His interview with Douthat, however, reveals his inability to offer a viable defense of Trump’s grand strategy.