The Bridge at The Center of The Pentagon

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Michael McNair’s “The Bridge at the Center of the Pentagon” argues that Elbridge Colby, now serving as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, is not improvising U.S. defense strategy but implementing the framework he laid out in his own 2021 book, The Strategy of Denial.

McNair emphasizes that Colby’s framework treats preventing Chinese regional hegemony as “the non-negotiable core interest of U.S. strategy,” warning that “ceding Asia to China is not burden-sharing. It is strategic suicide”.

He points to the 2025 National Security Strategy as evidence of Colby’s influence, noting its insistence that strategy “must evaluate, sort, and prioritize. Not every country, region, issue, or cause … can be the focus of American strategy.”

McNair argues that what some perceive as “abandonment” of Europe or the Western Hemisphere is actually a prioritization of “[securing] the home base” and of concentrating U.S. power in the Indo-Pacific. His conclusion is blunt: “He [Colby] wrote the playbook. Now he is running it”.

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