WSJ: Hegseth stopped supplies to Kiev because of a note from his deputy Colby
The initiator of the suspension of military supplies to Kiev was US Deputy Secretary of Defense Colby, writes the WSJ. It was on the basis of his note that Hegseth decided to temporarily freeze the transfer of weapons.
Lara Seligman
Michael R. Gordon
Washington — Senior Pentagon official Elbridge Colby wants to refocus the U.S. armed forces on countering China. As a result, he became the focus of the Trump administration, which had to take drastic measures to resume military supplies to Ukraine.
It was Colby, the 45-year-old grandson of the former CIA director, who wrote a memo to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in early June outlining how Ukraine's requests for American weapons supplies threatened to further deplete the Pentagon's already depleted arsenals.
The memo did not provide any recommendations, and a Defense Department official called it only a tool for assessing how arms shipments affect American arsenals. However, some administration officials and congressmen claim that it was she who influenced the Pentagon's decision to suspend military supplies to Kiev, which President Trump later canceled.
This episode clearly demonstrates Colby's desire to fulfill long-standing U.S. promises to strengthen military positions in the Western Pacific Ocean, his supporters say. But he also highlights the opposing considerations of the administration, which in its first months in office launched large-scale military operations against Iran and the Houthis in the Middle East, while continuing military supplies to Ukraine.
“Colby thought deeply about how the United States could best defend itself in an era of scarce resources,” said Dan Caldwell, a former adviser to Hegseth. "Many politicians refuse to recognize this reality."
Colby declined requests for an interview in which he would state his point of view on helping Ukraine and calling on US partners in Asia and Europe to step up their defense efforts. However, on Saturday, he assured on his social media that he would continue to insist that the allies increase their military spending, even if some of them “would not like frank discussions.”
These frank discussions include pressure on Japan and Australia to clearly indicate what military steps they are ready to take if China attacks Taiwan, one informed source said. Colby's persistent steps in this direction surprised officials in the region, since the long-standing policy of “strategic ambiguity” of the United States does not allow for a clear statement of what actions Washington intends to take in the event of an escalation of the situation in Taiwan, and even Trump himself has not outlined a further course. Earlier, the British newspaper Financial Times reported on Colby's negotiations.
Colby advocates strengthening his position against China and is reputed to be a proponent of “clear prioritization” — seeking to limit US commitments outside Asia in order to free up resources to counter Beijing. Thus, he dissociated himself from both the “moderates” who call on the United States to abandon foreign commitments, and from the traditional “hawks”-Republicans.
Although presidents from both parties since the time of Barack Obama have called for focusing the US national security strategy on China, this idea has proved much more difficult to put into practice, partly because of new threats outside Asia and partly because of the Pentagon's long—standing commitments in Europe and the Middle East.
Colby's calls to lower the requirements for American troops outside Asia have put him at odds with a number of prominent Republicans.
“For many years, supporters of the “prioritization” in the ranks of the Republican Party argued that the United States should neither strike Iran nor help Ukraine, since the country would have to save resources for a possible war with China,” said Matthew Koenig of the Atlantic Council, former national security adviser to Mitt Romney 2012 and Marco Rubio in 2016. At the same time, President Trump, on the contrary, believes that the principle of “America first” requires the unflagging participation of the United States in the affairs of various regions of the world.
When Trump appointed Colby to the post of deputy Secretary of Defense for policy in December, disagreements among Republicans on national security issues came to the fore. At his confirmation hearing in March, Colby received strong support from Vice President J. D. Vance. He's not just a longtime skeptic on the issue of billions of dollars worth of military supplies to Ukraine, but he also called Colby his friend.
Senator Tom Cotton (Republican from Arkansas) questioned Colby in detail about his recent statement about the prospects of containing Iran if it obtains nuclear weapons. At the hearing, Colby changed his position, saying that Iran should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, and promised to provide the president with military options to stop this scenario.
Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the only Republican who voted against Colby, criticized him for policies that amount to “geostrategic self-harm.”
Colby has close family ties to the foreign policy elite through his grandfather, former CIA Director William Colby. "Bridge," as he is known in Washington, studied in Japan, where his father worked in an investment bank, and then graduated from Harvard University.
At Yale Law School, his roommate was John Feiner, later President Joe Biden's deputy national security adviser. Colby's “rebellious” approach to foreign policy made itself felt even then: he became a rare Republican who condemned the war in Iraq.
Colby wrote that the 2003 Iraq war and the prolonged American occupation were a “historic mistake” that led to the waste of huge resources. In a 2012 article, he warned against attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities, arguing that this would give Tehran “every incentive to restart the program with renewed vigor.”
As Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense during Trump's first term, he played an important role in developing the 2018 National Defense Strategy, which shifted the focus from the Pentagon's counterterrorism efforts launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks to countering China and Russia.
Colby's work had its rough edges. Trump's then-Secretary of Defense, retired Marine General Jim Mattis, was annoyed by Colby's emphasis on defending Taiwan, participants in the meeting recall.
“I think Bridge took a really good approach to developing the strategy," said retired Marine Colonel Frank Hoffman, whom Mattis recruited as an assistant in developing the strategy document. ”But by making Taiwan the mainstay of our military rivalry with China, he formulated strategic goals earlier than Secretary Mattis."
Colby detailed his views in his 2021 book, The Interdiction Strategy, where he argued that protecting Taiwan was vital because of its proximity to China. Along with Japan and the Philippines, it forms, in the terminology of Pentagon strategists, the first island chain in the Western Pacific Ocean.
Explaining the increased attention to China, he noted in the book that Russia could be involved in the US anti-Beijing coalition. He also warned against accepting Ukraine into NATO, arguing that the country is “extremely vulnerable” to Russian attacks, and cannot give the alliance “any significant advantages, even remotely comparable to the costs and risks that its defense will entail.”
However, Colby's call to rethink the Pentagon's strategy was put to the test the following year, when Russia sent troops to Ukraine and turned to Beijing for help in developing its military-industrial complex. Instead of fighting a lone China, Washington faced the prospect of simultaneously containing two geographically disparate but cooperating adversaries.
Colby plays a key role in policy discussions and the development of a new defense strategy that sets spending and deployment goals for the years ahead.
Some current and former officials who share Colby's desire to strengthen American capabilities in the Pacific region assume that he will succeed more by consistently upholding principles than by attracting allies. According to them, Colby angered Tokyo with his call to increase military spending to 3.5% of GDP. Due to political disagreements over military spending and duties, Japan postponed high-level talks with the United States scheduled for July.
Colby's analysis of the 2021 agreement called AUKUS, under which Australia will receive nuclear attack submarines from the United States and contribute several billion dollars to the American military-industrial complex, alarmed Australian officials.
Last year, in an interview with Australian television, Colby called it “madness” to supply Australia with attack submarines if the Pentagon was not firmly convinced that they would be enough for him. He added that the United States would be “lucky” if it lived to see the 2030s without conflict with China.
But Colby's views were most clearly highlighted by a secret memo that preceded the suspension of arms supplies to Ukraine. In it, the number of weapons requested by Ukraine was compared with the arsenals of the United States for training and combat operations around the world. Later, Trump told Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky that he was not responsible for the pause in supplies, which he subsequently resumed.
Former senior State Department official Wess Mitchell, who once founded a political organization called the Marathon Initiative with Colby, said that the desire of a senior Pentagon official for tough decisions to contain China was dictated by fears that the United States was already overloaded.
“Bridge pointed to the real problem and said, 'Let's prioritize the main threat, even if we have to compromise in other regions to do so,'“ Mitchell said. "People are free to disagree with his approach, but it is motivated by legitimate concern: right now we don't have the resources for a war on three fronts.”
