Elbridge Colby spent the last several years in Washington making a name for himself as an experienced, restraint-minded foreign policy leader eager to focus the U.S. military away from Europe and toward the Indo-Pacific.
But since joining the second Trump administration as the Pentagon’s top policy chief, Colby has made a series of rapid-fire moves that have blindsided parts of the White House and frustrated several of America’s foreign allies, according to seven people familiar with the situation. All were granted anonymity to speak freely about Trump administration dynamics.
Flanked by a team of handpicked policy experts and staff from Capitol Hill, Colby has gotten out ahead of the administration on several major foreign policy decisions.
He prompted last week’s decision, first reported by POLITICO, to halt shipments of some air defense missiles to Ukraine, which caught many Trump allies and lawmakers off guard. This week, President Donald Trump said he would reverse the decision to pause the weapons but claimed he did not know who had approved it.
Colby also surprised top officials at the State Department and the National Security Council in June when he decided to review America’s submarine pact with Australia and the U.K.
“He is pissing off just about everyone I know inside the administration,” said one person familiar with the situation. “They all view him as the guy who’s going to make the U.S. do less in the world in general.”
And in conversations with defense counterparts from Britain and Japan in recent months, Colby’s hard-charging style has caused serious dustups.
“He has basically decided that he’s going to be the intellectual driving force behind a kind of neo-isolationism that believes that the United States should act more alone, that allies and friends are kind of encumbering,” said a person familiar with the Trump administration dynamics.
Colby did not respond to a request for comment.
William Martin, communications director to Vice President JD Vance, called Colby “a consummate professional, an experienced national security official and a reliable team player” who is “wholly committed to President Trump’s America First foreign policy agenda.”
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said Colby is doing exactly what would be expected of his job. “The entire purpose of Undersecretary Colby’s job is to provide policy recommendations to Secretary Hegseth, and his advice has proved to be invaluable,” he wrote in an email.
Parnell added there is “zero daylight” between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Colby.
When the British defense team came to the Pentagon in June and spoke about the U.K.’s decision to send an aircraft carrier to Asia on a routine deployment, Colby interjected with a brusque comment.
“He basically asked them, ‘Is it too late to call it back?’” said the person familiar with Trump administration dynamics. “Because we don’t want you there.” A second person familiar with the meeting confirmed this account.
The British team on the other side of the table “were just shocked,” the first person added. “He was basically saying, ‘You have no business being in the Indo-Pacific.’”
Colby has also irked allies by pushing them too hard to boost defense spending — or telling them to simply get out of America’s way. “DOD has been telling a European partner that we don’t need the Europeans to be doing anything [in the Indo-Pacific],” said one U.S. official familiar with the conversations.
In the spring, Japanese officials believed the Trump administration might push them for a modest increase in defense spending. Initially, Colby publicly called on Japan to spend “at least 3 percent of GDP on defense as soon as possible,” which angered Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. But that number soon increased to a much steeper target of 5 percent, which reportedly contributed to the collapse of plans for a high-level meeting between Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and their Japanese counterparts.
“The Japanese were very frustrated,” said a person familiar with the talks. “They thought that they were agreeing to at least negotiate on the basis of 3 or 3.5 percent. Then Colby, all of a sudden, got DOD to say 5, and the Japanese got angry, because that’s not what they just agreed to.”
The incident caused heartburn within Japan’s ruling party, with officials worried about triggering a domestic political backlash ahead of a sensitive election, the person added.
The hawkish wing of the Republican Party has expressed concerns that Colby’s “shoot first and ask questions later” approach is sapping Trump’s foreign policy of its strength at a key moment.
“The president’s leadership at NATO and his decision to strike Iran gave Russia and China good reason to fear America’s resolve,” said a senior GOP aide. “But Colby has just undercut the president and squandered his boss’ leverage.”
The AUKUS review surprised some State Department officials who dealt directly with the pact. The department’s immediate guidance on how to respond to media questions about the topic appeared to underscore the lack of coordination, a State Department official said. The instructions told diplomats to say to reporters: “We are not aware of a review of the AUKUS agreement. The secretary of Defense has not requested a review of the agreement from the secretary of State.”
“The way that one person from State put it to me is: ‘Who is this fucking guy?’” said a former U.S. official familiar with the policy discussions.
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce praised Colby’s leadership. “The world is changing rapidly and Elbridge understands the moment. His innovative leadership is critical to addressing the challenges head-on and helping to deliver on President Trump’s America First agenda.”
Trump’s announcement Monday that he would resume weapons shipments to Ukraine, just days after the Pentagon paused them, left the impression on some lawmakers that restraint-minded officials at the Pentagon were out of step with the president.
“I’m deeply worried that [Colby] buys into the authoritarian worldview that you know, Putin’s a dictator, and Xi is a dictator, and Trump aspires to be a dictator, so let’s just let all the dictators get together and divide up the world,” said House Armed Services ranking member Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.). “That is horrific policy for the world and for the United States.”
Colby, the grandson of a former CIA director, has allies throughout the Pentagon, including Alex Velez-Green and Austin Dahmer, former staffers for Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.); and Katherine Thompson, who holds the Pentagon’s top job for Europe, Africa and NATO. All of them have embraced his approach. Others, including Alexander Gray, who served in the first Trump administration as chief of staff on the National Security Council, defended Colby as someone committed to the president and Hegseth’s agenda.
“The things that are publicly known that he’s pushing for are all things that are consistent with the president and the secretary’s stated positions and guidance,” Gray said. “The guy’s a skilled bureaucratic tactician, and he’s good at implementing what the people above him want, and people who don’t win in those battles go and complain about it.”
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