(Prefatory note: I don't claim to be omniscient but do have a presumption that war is harmful, to us, as much or more often, than to the Enemy, so maybe I'm wrong in opposing our many wars. But what I unapologetically do not offer a disclaimer for is my belief that telling lies of a nation's leader being "Peaceful," interferes with my "Right to Know," and our citizenry's ability to make it's soundest judgment, and that is the assault upon our "consciousness" that escalated beyond anything that went before in our history, though the Conservative Movement of Buckley, Burnham, and Kendall, and Teddy Roosevelt came close. And not coincidentally, why they're held up as models for the current administration.) To the author of the piece below: I'm not above saying, "I told you so," because I did, ever since 2015 here when the cognitive campaign began to reinvent the Republican Party and more specifically, it's successful POTUS candidate, as being for "Peace," interpreted as "Peace Through Strength," as in the attached file named as such. Which I say as well to some "peace activists," including people with intelligence backgrounds whom I know who also fell for this cognitive campaign, and still sing the praises of the Trump administration, such as for the openly Islamophobic Hindu Radical Nationalist and Modi loyalist Tulsi Gabbard and nominated FBI Director Kash Patel, both virtual members of the Israeli governing fascist coalition. It's enough to make me swear off peace activism! One can see how influential the March 8, 2018 article you and your co-author wrote supporting the Democratic Senator's letter to Tillerson was, in Elbridge Colby's continuous incitement for war against China and Russia in 2018, published not long after your Consortium article, which was "nada." |
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Elbridge Colby is given, and accepts, credit for the 2018 NDS, which he wrote in this capacity, from Wikipedia: "In May 2017, Colby was appointed the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development, a role in which he served into 2018." . . . "From 2014 to 2017, Colby was the Robert M. Gates fellow at the Center for a New American Security, the most militarily aggressive think-tank in DC, next to the Quincy Institute's favorite, the Heritage Foundation." He was back with CNAS when he explained the NDS to the SASC in early 2019. Tip: search for "Russia" in each, and perhaps you can explain why you and your fellow Trump apologists would later tout Trump as a "Peacemaker"? Here is what Colby said in 2019: The Particular Threat Posed by China and Russia
"China in particular and to a lesser extent Russia present by far the most severe threats to our alliance architecture. The once overwhelming U.S. conventional military advantage vis a vis these major powers has eroded and will continue to erode absent overriding focus and effort by the United States and its allies and partners. China and Russia pose a particular kind of threat to U.S. allies and established partners like Taiwan. Beijing and Moscow have plausible theories of victory that could involve employing a combination of “gray zone” activities (such as through the use of subversion by “little green men,”), robust anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) networks, lethal and fast maneuver forces, and strategic capabilities, especially nuclear arsenals." What did Colby say that differed in any way from what Clinton, or Biden, ever said, both of whom you've criticized? Where is Colby today? "On December 22, 2024, President-elect Trump nominated Colby to serve as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy for his second term as president.[14] Political views""Colby identifies as a realist. He believes that China is the principal threat faced by the United States, and that Asia should be the priority of U.S. efforts and resources.[15] He advocates for the U.S. to shift its military planning and resources to prepare for a conflict over Taiwan, and supports bolstering U.S. industrial capacity.[4][15] In a Time article he co-authored with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, Colby wrote that: "[W]e need to be absolutely clear: Without question, the top external threat to America is China—by far."[16] He is a "prioritizer", believing the U.S. to have limited military resources, and thus supporting a reorientation of U.S. military resources away from the Middle East and Europe to Asia and China.[17] Foreign Policy describes him as "the loudest and perhaps most cogent voice in Washington advocating a complete shift away from Europe, NATO, and Russia and toward the growing challenge from China".[18] But guess where Russia is: Asia, much of it. Anyone who thinks a US war against China doesn't include Russia can't read a map, or U.S. doctrine. Both Colby and Roberts have always called for inclusion of Russia on an equal basis as China as "The Particular Threat Posed by China and Russia." Arms Control which you touted in your co-written article? https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-09/news/us-completes-inf-treaty-withdrawal"Less than one year after President Donald Trump informally announced that the United States would withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the State Department announced on Aug. 2 that the move was officially complete. The treaty’s death leaves just the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in place to limit U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons deployments, and that pact is due to expire in February 2021. . . . "In October 2018, on the sidelines of a campaign rally, Trump stated that he planned to “terminate” the INF Treaty. Since then, U.S. and Russian officials held only a few unsuccessful meetings to discuss the treaty." . . . "Trump echoed that statement in Aug. 2 comments, saying that “if [Russia is] not going to live up to their commitment, then we have to—we always have to be in the lead.” The White House previously also cited concerns about the intermediate-range missile arsenal of China, which is not party to the treaty and has deployed large numbers of missiles with ranges that Washington and Moscow were long prohibited from deploying." https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2020-12/news/us-completes-open-skies-treaty-withdrawal. "The United States formally withdrew from the 1992 Open Skies Treaty on Nov. 22 despite domestic and international pressure to remain party to the accord, including from President-elect Joe Biden and numerous U.S. allies. . . . "Following the U.S. withdrawal, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Rep. William Keating (D-Mass.) issued a Nov. 23 statement maintaining that the Trump administration broke the law when it neglected to notify Congress 120 days before issuing an intent to withdraw from the treaty as required by the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). “President Trump is attempting to burn down our critical institutions on his way out the door,” they wrote. “In doing so, he not only jeopardized U.S. national security, but he blatantly ignored and deliberately broke the law.” At the end of Trump's term in 2021, Republican Presidents from 2001 on (Bush/Trump) had withdrawn the U.S. from all Arms Control Treaties, to include those entered into by Reagan. Yet you and your fellow Trump apologists, often appearing on the Schiller Institute's programming, would have the public believing that the only threat to peace, comes from Republican's opponents, the Democrats. Which disqualifies anyone as a credible authority on these issues as in being solely a Republican partisan, I hate to say. With that routine here on this email list ever since 2015. So with all of Colby's military aggressiveness, he is a "Realist," as Wikipedia says, which is agreed upon by no less of an "authority" than the "non-partisan" Responsible Statecraft: BLUF: "Elbridge Colby, who worked guiding Pentagon policy in first Trump administration and is an advocate of building up military assets and deterrence as a way to avoid future U.S. wars — particularly with China — has just been named the incoming Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. "It is an important role, and one that realists and many restrainers are all too happy to go to Colby, who is the most representative of the realist approach to foreign policy that Trump has nominated or selected since winning the White House in November. Colby has openly said he opposed the Iraq war and every U.S. conflict/overseas intervention since, and has been a vocal critic of U.S. proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. He has supported Ukraine's campaign to defend itself, but says the war is not a first priority interest of the United States and warns that continuing Washington aid and weapons at the current pace won't make a difference there, while sapping U.S. resources for its own defenses. "His pick has realists, particularly on the Right, cheering, comparing him to an older tradition of U.S. foreign policy practitioners." So Colby defines "Realism and Restraint" for the National Conservative promoting Quincy institute, which I agree with. But in its true meaning, going back to Machiavelli, Hobbes, and the later war-loving "racist-realists" described here (scroll down for excerpt): Here is von Bernhardi articulating Colby's "realism," a century ago: |
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Here is an opposing view to Republican Statecraft's panegyric to Colby. It contains a lot of nonsense of "Republican Isolationism," when what they're always stood for is Agression, against one or more Enemies," but in fascist brown, here is the essence of what Colby stands for: "Colby’s foreign policy influence is more than just another installment in the long-running fight between isolationists and hawks in the GOP. It’s part of the mounting revival of the Asia First doctrine that the party championed in the aftermath of World War II, when the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek, a hero to American conservatives, fled to Taiwan in December 1949 as Mao’s communist forces won the civil war. The result was the rise of a vocal and highly influential “China Lobby” on the political right that demanded that Harry S. Truman withhold recognition of Red China and support Taiwan. Indeed, in 1951, Sen. Robert A. Taft, who was known as “Mr. Republican,” published a book called A Foreign Policy For Americans decrying Western Europeans for failing to pay for their own defense and warning that China was enemy number one. "Today, a new China Lobby is forming in the GOP, and Colby is one of its leaders. It espouses a self-consciously “realist” approach to foreign affairs, seeking to split the difference between the MAGA isolationists and the neoconservative hawks by arguing that China — not Russia (TP-but see below)— poses a dire threat to American national security, and that excessive support for Ukraine is jeopardizing it. It holds above all that American military planning and resources should be directed toward planning for a conflict with China over Taiwan. When I spoke with Colby, he explained, “Ukraine should not be the focus. The best way to avoid war with China is to be manifestly prepared such that Beijing recognizes that an attack on Taiwan is likely to fail. We need to be a hawk to get to a place where we can be a dove. It’s about a balance of power.” Talk like this has won Colby admirers among those surfing the right’s new populist wave. That includes Tucker Carlson, who has proved to be an influential voice in pushing the GOP to jettison Ukraine. When Colby appeared on Carlson’s show last year and blasted the Biden administration’s “moral posturing” on Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the world, the Fox News host declared, “Elbridge Colby, I wish you were running the State Department.” This March, Colby went on Fox’s “Ingraham Angle” to warn that the ties between China and Russia were “a massive danger.” The notion that America needed to aid Ukraine first was “a delusion” and had led to it becoming “bogged down in Europe.” The biggest "delusion" regarding "Realists" like Colby is that he isn't a war-fevered proponent of war, but "realist" to the extent he knows we can't take the world on all at once, but need to act with "restraint" as we war against all of the world, but by "priority." UnHerd is a far-right media platform, to a far-right audience, so they don't camouflage their "agitprop" for that audience, so consequently is more "honest" in their assessments of politics than Republican Statecraft, so they're more credible on what is really "Realism." "Elbridge Colby, who wrote the National Defense Strategy in 2018, has now been picked to be the next Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, vowing to “focus our defense policy on restoring peace through strength and always putting America first”. . . . "Colby believes that the military threat posed by Beijing is far more potent and concerning than is generally understood in Washington. In turn, he argues that US military resources need to be redeployed from Europe and the Middle East to the Pacific in order to better deter China. . . . "In tandem with Trump’s push for European allies to spend more on defence, an argument that Colby has made repeatedly, we should therefore expect fewer high-end naval and air force deployments on the continent. This should not be a great concern for European governments, which have traditionally preferred the Americans to carry the expensive weight of deterrence activities related to Russia. Because of Moscow’s increasingly sophisticated nuclear ballistic missile submarine forces, however, the US Navy will maintain submarine deployments in European waters under Trump. If Europe is to reach one conclusion from Colby’s appointment, it is that its leaders should invest significantly and immediately in refuelling and transport aircraft, and boost support for Ukraine. "While some claim that giving Colby a top Defense brief will lead to an abandonmentof US support for Ukraine, this concern is arguably overstated. Though he has lobbied for a more cautious provision of US military aid to Ukraine, the incoming administration is likely to recognise that this aid is its primary lever of influence towards Russian concessions in future peace negotiations. Still, Colby’s appointment does emphasise that Trump wants to put intellectual weight behind his argument that Europe must do much more for its own security. The same principle applies to other allies such as Taiwan and Japan, which Colby has argued must also significantly increase defence spending." Here is "true" Realism," with all that Republican Statecraft/The American Conservative magazine are claiming for it is just more historical revisionism!Introduction: racist-imperial conceptions of world politics "While conventional IR historiography assumes that realist international theory emerged initially in its classical form via the works of E. H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau round about the time of World War II, this obscures a range of thinkers writing in the post-1889 era who developed what I shall call racist-realism. In this chapter I shall explore some of the key exponents – notably the geopoliticians, Alfred Mahan and Halford Mackinder – and, albeit indirectly, the German racist-realists, Ludwig Gumplowicz and Gustav Ratzenhofer (via my discussion of Ward, given that his vision of imperialism drew directly from their work). Note that I shall reserve for Chapter 7 the discussion of the other racist-realists who wrote in the pre-1914 era, including Friedrich Ratzel, Rudolf Kjellén, Heinrich von Treitschke and Friedrich von Bernhardi. One of the main themes of my discussion of racist realism is that it was a multivalent approach that exhibited many different facets. In Chapter 7 I shall differentiate the German geopolitikers from Hitler and others according to their different brands of racism that in turn yield various conceptions of imperialism. Here it is noteworthy that Mahan and Mackinder differed not only to the likes of von Treitschke and von Bernhardi, Hitler and others, but also to the American racist-realists such as Theodore Roosevelt (1894/1897, 1905), Whitelaw Reid (1900) and Henry Cabot Lodge (1899). For these latter three thinkers embraced an optimistic white triumphalist sensibility, believing that the manifest destiny of the white race to expand and conquer the globe was at hand. Although Mahan and Mackinder did not express the extreme levels of anxiety associated with the likes of Stoddard, Charles Pearson and Hitler, nevertheless they were gripped by an imaginary discourse of the ‘coming yellow barbarians’. On Jan 26, 2025, at 8:21 AM, Gilbert Doctorow via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:
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