Saturday, May 24, 2025
Saturday, May 24, 2025
The Senate voted 54-45 today to confirm Elbridge Colby as under secretary of defense for policy.
Three Democrats voted for Colby -- Sens. Jack Reed (D-RI), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ) -- while Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was the only Republican to oppose him.
Colby’s nomination ran into early resistance amid discussion of his views that the United States should consider lesser roles in Europe and the Middle East in order to properly pivot to the Indo-Pacific region to compete with China.
McConnell released a statement after Colby’s confirmation saying the “prioritization that Mr. Colby argues is fresh, new and urgently needed is, in fact, a return to an Obama-era conception of a la carte geostrategy.”
“Abandoning Ukraine and Europe and downplaying the Middle East to prioritize the Indo-Pacific is not a clever geopolitical chess move,” McConnell continued. “It is geostrategic self-harm that emboldens our adversaries and drives wedges between America and our allies for them to exploit.”
Vice President Vance responded to McConnell’s statement by posting on X: “Mitch’s vote today -- like so much of the last few years of his career -- is one of the great acts of political pettiness I’ve ever seen.”
McConnell has broken with the Trump administration over several nominees, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose nomination needed to be saved by Vance’s historic tie-breaking vote.
During his March 4 nomination hearing, Colby, who would be one of the primary authors of the Trump administration’s upcoming national defense strategy, said he wants to deliver a “realistic strategy of prioritization focused on China” while working with allies in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
“We don’t have a military that's capable of fighting four adversaries,” he said. "Because the threat is so acute and so realistic, and because of the very real possibility of multifront war, we must have a realistic plan. I feel a special obligation that, if confirmed, I must deliver a strategy that actually deals with that.”
McConnell, however, argued that Colby’s confirmation “leaves open the door for the less-polished standard-bearers of restraint and retrenchment at the Pentagon to do irreparable damage to the system of alliances and partnerships which serve as force multipliers to U.S. leadership,” while also encouraging “isolationist perversions of peace through strength to continue apace at the highest levels of administration policymaking.”
In a written statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Colby said the United States should prioritize the defense Taiwan, while showing less concern for Ukraine and U.S. allies in Europe.
“As President Trump has repeatedly emphasized, it is vitally important that our European allies take the lead in providing security assistance to Ukraine and deterring further Russian aggression, including by rapidly increasing their own defense spending and production,” he wrote.