Elbridge Colby is Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as under secretary of defense for policy, but Sen. Tom Cotton is thinking about derailing his nomination. Colby not only has the president’s support, he’s also been defended on social media by the leading pro-Trump voices, from Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk to Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance. The Heritage Foundation has also called for the Senate to confirm Colby.
What makes Colby, who served faithfully in the first Trump administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, more objectionable to Cotton than Tulsi Gabbard or Robert F. Kennedy were? The Arkansas senator voted to confirm both of those ex-Democrats for higher offices than the one to which Colby has been nominated.
The answer, Cotton has indicated, is that he believes Colby is insufficiently fearful of Iran’s nuclear program. In 2010, Colby wrote a Foreign Policy essay arguing that Iran could be strategically contained even if it did develop a nuclear weapon, though Colby concluded, “containment is certainly not the best outcome—successfully preventing Iranian acquisition is.”
Why Elbridge Colby Matters
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