Should seeking to prioritize threats to US national security disqualify officials from leading policy positions? The campaign underway to prevent former Assistant Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby from gaining a senior position in the Trump administration certainly suggests so. Colby made his name in the first Trump administration working to reorient US defense policy toward competition with China, an effort that has since become widely embraced across the political spectrum. Since then, he’s continued to argue for rigorous prioritization of a US grand strategy to handle great power competition with Beijing.
School Authors: Joshua Shifrinson