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Elbridge Over Troubled Waters

How Elbridge Colby, a longtime critic of military adventurism in the Middle East, contorted himself into a champion of Trump’s war in Iran—and became Congress’s new favorite whipping boy in the process.

Elbridge Colby
Colby had, for nearly two decades, built his career and public persona on arguing that America needed to focus almost exclusively on China and pivot away from the Middle East, a region he called “relatively unimportant” just five years ago. Photo: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Julia Ioffe
March 12, 2026

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Twice last week, Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary for defense policy, set out from his office in the Pentagon and schlepped across the river to Capitol Hill. It had been just over a month since his office had issued its long-awaited—and long-delayed—National Defense Strategy, the congressionally mandated strategic framework for the nation’s military. Colby had been slated to testify about it before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday and the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday.