US president-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Elbridge Colby as US undersecretary of defense for policy — a pivotal role in advising and supporting the US secretary of defense on strategy, planning and international alliances — is positive news for Taiwan and signals that the US is prioritizing regional and global stability in its foreign policy, which should be welcomed across the political aisle.
Colby, who Trump nominated on Dec. 23 last year and if confirmed by the US Senate would become the No. 3 official in the Pentagon, is a leading proponent of the US implementing the “pivot to Asia” that was first announced by then-US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2011, but never realized as successive US administrations became distracted by wars in Europe and the Middle East.
The pivot “foundered on the shoals of execution,” wrote foreign policy analysts Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine, an intellectual ally of Colby, in their recent book Lost Decade: The US Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power.
Colby served in the Pentagon during Trump’s first administration and led the development of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, a paradigm-shifting document that changed the focus of US grand strategy from combating terrorism to “inter-state strategic competition.”
“It is increasingly clear that China and Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model — gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic and security decisions,” the document said.
Since leaving the administration, Colby has become a leading advocate of the US prioritizing the threat China poses to US interests. Colby in his public speeches, media engagements and writings has been calling for the US to focus on Asia, while asking US European allies to take up more defense responsibility in their region to free up some of the US’ resources.
“Asia’s more important than Europe, China is more formidable than Russia, and the other European states are much stronger relative to Russia than the Asian ones are relative to China. Today, it’s clear as a bell that we should be focusing on Asia,” he told New Statesman writer Sohrab Ahmari in July last year.
In Colby’s book The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict, published in 2021 and which offers a grand strategy framework for the US in the context of China’s growing power, he said the main purpose of the US’ grand strategy should be to prevent China’s dominance of Asia, which means fashioning an “anti-hegemonic coalition” of US allies to safeguard the “status quo” in the region that has been the bedrock of peace, stability and prosperity over the past few decades.
“Regional hegemony can be denied to a state such as China if enough states in or active in the key region can league together to wield more power than the aspiring hegemon [China],” he wrote.
Colby’s appointment likely means Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and other allies would be asked to spend more on their defenses, as part of an anti-hegemonic coalition, which would help the democratic alliance restore a balance of power and contain Beijing’s revisionism.
Colby has long advocated that Taiwan increase its defense spending. In an op-ed in the Taipei Times in May last year, he called on the nation to spend 5 percent of its GDP on defense, citing how Poland and Israel, which face fewer existential threats, spend more than 4 percent.
With an incoming US administration seeking to revitalize the alliance system, the executive and legislative branches should be ready to deepen communication with the US and ensure that internal divisions do not hinder the nation from reaching its defense commitments.
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