The Pentagon’s new “realism” policy in the Asia-Pacific rejects moralizing and identifying regional threats, the Pentagon’s chief policymaker said in a major speech Monday that omitted references to China’s nefarious activities and regional aggression.
Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of defense for policy, said during a speech in the Philippines that U.S. defense leaders will not call out states engaged in efforts to bully regional allies or seeking to control large areas of the region.
Instead, the new Pentagon policy calls for quiet and respectful relations — while also bolstering American military defenses along a chain of islands off the coast of China known as the first island chain.
Mr. Colby’s 4,000-word speech to a think tank in Manila made no specific reference to China, but it was clear from the context of the speech and earlier comments that he was referring to Beijing.
The new policy will seek to be strong and clear but quiet, Mr. Colby said, noting it reflects President Theodore Roosevelt’s maxim of speaking softly and carrying a big stick.
“We will mean what we say and say what we mean. We will not engage in peacocking or moralizing speeches,” Mr. Colby said.
Critics have defined “peacocking” as displays of military resolve that appear more symbolic than strategic.
The new policy is not a rejection of earlier policies but “a hard-nosed, clear-eyed republican realism that puts our people’s concrete interests first, but in ways that also align with the interests of many other countries,” Mr. Colby said.
The policy is not isolationist but a more “businesslike recalibration” based on self-interest that is practical and not ideological or rigid, he said.
Mr. Colby said the Pentagon does not feel the need to engage in what he called “loud, rhetorical provocations” through “moralizing speeches.”
Instead, U.S. forces will seek to send signals of power through industrial readiness and “the quiet, relentless strengthening of deterrence,” he said.
The new policy will seek to rid Asia of “hegemony,” though Mr. Colby did not identify the potential hegemon or what it is doing.
Unmentioned by Mr. Colby were China’s activities in the region that have grown increasingly aggressive, including maritime confrontations by China against the Philippines in the South China Sea over disputed islands, large-scale and threatening military exercises near Taiwan that have altered the fragile status quo across the Taiwan Strait and increasingly belligerent rhetoric toward Japan.
China also continues to conduct alarming cyberattacks that have included planting malicious software in U.S. infrastructure that can be used for future sabotage, large-scale theft of American high technology and intellectual property, and aggressive espionage and influence operations targeting the United States.
Mr. Colby said the new policy is based on what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a speech last year is the U.S. military’s goal of building a “denial defense” in the Western Pacific to deter aggression and render war irrational.
The denial defense will include distributed logistics and prepositioned military assets in the region that will rely on shared infrastructure with allies.
The policy official, who is considered the Pentagon’s No.3 leader, criticized what he called policy elites and pundits over past U.S. policies toward China.
Washington’s “elite commentariat” appears to oppose the new approach, but Mr. Colby said the new policy is aligned with those of past presidents and leaders such as Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and Ronald Reagan.
All sought to strengthen the U.S. military position while engaging actively with potential opponents, he said, referring indirectly to the Trump administration’s renewed engagement policy with China.
Reagan, however, launched a zero-sum policy toward the United States’ primary Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union, in the 1980s, once telling an aide that his view of the ideological battle was simple: “We win; they lose.” The Soviet Union collapsed peacefully in 1991.
The realism policy calls for creating a balance of power in the region through military investment reflected in the administration’s latest $1.5 trillion defense budget request, Mr. Colby said.
“This is not an approach that purports to stand in judgment of every action by other countries, as has been so typical of the post-Cold War American approach here in the region,” Mr. Colby said.
“We will of course stick to and stand for our principles, but we will not hold hostage progress on key issues of strategic importance because of them.”
Critics have said the realism policy and limited denial defense toward China lean toward defeatism.
The U.S. military buildup near China will be backed by diplomacy in pursuit of “strategic stability,” Mr. Colby said, the term used to describe hoped-for U.S.-China relations at the May summit in Beijing between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Mr. Colby said last month in a podcast interview that his new policy will include “speaking respectfully” with Chinese officials, and he criticized China policy during the first Trump administration for seeking what he said is regime change in Beijing.
“What we are trying to achieve along the First Island Chain is not regime-changing somebody and occupying their country and pacifying them, blah, blah, blah,” Mr. Colby told the New York Times. “No, no. It is about maritime and aerospace defense along an archipelago.”
During the first administration, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not call for the overthrow of the Chinese communist regime. Instead, Mr. Pompeo, in a 2020 speech, said the U.S. should work with Chinese people to change CCP behavior.
China, for the past decade, has demanded that the United States respect its communist system as a precondition for better relations.
The Chinese Communist Party fears the United States is working to undermine what it calls Marxism-Leninism with Chinese characteristics, Beijing’s state ideology that mixes anti-capitalism with nationalism.
The new China policy apparently seeks to dissuade Chinese leaders from the idea that the United States wants to replace its system.
Mr. Colby in the speech Monday sought to debunk a key Chinese propaganda theme that the United States is in terminal decline, although he did not attribute the narrative to Beijing.
The U.S. economy, military and technological advantage remain the world’s most advanced, he said.
Also, the United States is not disengaging from Asia but wants regional states to do more for their own defenses, he said.
Key regional states, such as the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and elsewhere, are being urged to increase trade and other ties with America.
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