Elbridge Colby, under secretary for defense policy at the Pentagon, is arguably Taiwan’s most powerful friend in Washington. But if China does make good on its threats to “re-unify” the island by force, will he be able to ensure that Donald Trump stands up to Xi Jinping?
Illustration by Luis Grañena
Some years ago, Elbridge “Bridge” Colby, the newly christened top policy official in the U.S. Department of Defense, met a People’s Liberation Army officer in Beijing and asked him whom he believed was the greatest Chinese leader. Colby, a history buff, grand strategist and self-described “conservative realist”, recalled in a 2023 interview that the officer’s answer was “Mao Zedong, because, even though he made mistakes and did some bad things, he was the one who got up at the proc
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