Elbridge Colby and the "Strategy of Denial"

Elbridge Colby is one of the principal architects of US defence strategy toward China. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development in Trump's first term (2017–2018) and was a key author of the 2018 National Defense Strategy — the document that formally reoriented US defence planning from counterterrorism to great-power competition with China and Russia.

In 2021, Colby published "The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict," which became the intellectual foundation for the current administration's approach. His central thesis: the US does not need to dominate every region globally, but it must prevent any rival — above all China — from achieving regional hegemony in Asia. This means concentrating US military power on "denying" China the ability to achieve its strategic objectives (including taking Taiwan) by force, by building and sustaining an anti-hegemonic coalition of capable regional states.

"Flexible realism" — the term Colby used repeatedly in Delhi — is the label applied to this strategy in the Trump administration's National Security Strategy. It emphasises bilateral interests-based alignments, burden-sharing, and operational interoperability over multilateral institutions or values-based alliances.