Aug. 22—Elbridge Colby, the U.S. Under Secretary of War for Policy of the President Donald Trump administration, has gained much deserved notoriety recently for advocating the lowering of the threshold for nuclear war by promoting the production, deployment, and possible use of tactical nuclear weapons.

In an Aug. 10 conference in Manila, Colby further pronounced that the United States intended to contain China by fielding “a fully operational, resilient architecture of denial defense stretching along the First Island Chain…. We will continue to speak softly. But we will continue to carry the world’s biggest stick,” Colby bragged.

He is also widely reported to be the lead author of the Trump administration’s December 2025 National Security Strategy document calling for a return to the policies of President Teddy Roosevelt’s imperial “Big Stick” in order to expel Chinese and Russian interests from the Western Hemisphere, and forcibly seize the region’s assets for the benefit of Wall Street and the City of London.