Publications

July 2, 2025

America is overextended. Here’s a better way forward.

Washington Post | “ The “simultaneity problem,” as it’s known in military circles, has been the most serious grand strategic challenge facing the United States for some time now.”........
May 27, 2025

The Case for a Pacific Defense Pact: America Needs a New Asian Alliance to Counter China

Foreign Affairs | The time has come for the United States to build a collective defense pact in Asia. For decades, such a pact was neither possible nor necessary. Today, in the face of a growing threat from China, it is both viable and essential..........
May 1, 2025

The Return of Great-Power Diplomacy: How Strategic Dealmaking Can Fortify American Power

Foreign Affairs | After the end of the Cold War, the United States moved away from using negotiations to promote the national interest. .......
April 22, 2025

Europe Still Lives in a Security Utopia

Foreign Policy | Europe needs a Walter Lippmann — the famous American journalist who, in 1943, argued that a gap between foreign commitments and capacity creates an “insolvent” foreign policy......
November 20, 2024

The Greater Gunbelt: The Next Defense Industrial Coalition

American Compass | It has become clear that the current DIB is ill-equipped to produce materiel adequate to achieve plausible mission objectives in any one theater America is currently engaged in, let alone all three ........
October 22, 2024

Allied Burden Sharing: The United States Shoulders an Unsustainable Weight [A Marathon Initiative Infographics Series]

The Marathon Initiative | America’s allies are heavily reliant on the United States for security. These dependencies belie the potential power of our partners – and America’s growing fiscal constraints........
October 18, 2024

Strategic Sequencing, Revisited

Internasjonalt Forum | Interview with Elbridge Colby: An exclusive interview that the head of the editorial committee, Ciwan Can, conducted with Elbridge Colby about how a possible victory for Donald Trump could affect the war in Ukraine and security in Europe. ........
September 24, 2024

Competition and Constraint: Toward a Balanced American Security Strategy

The Marathon Initiative | Washington cannot shrink from great-power competition where U.S. security is threatened, but nor can it form a strategy on the assumption that it possesses unlimited resources to compete, .......
September 17, 2024

How Biden Let Europe Slip Away

Wall Street Journal | On trade, defense and energy, Washington has failed to shore up the trans-Atlantic alliance.......
September 2, 2024

The U.S. and Taiwan Must Change Course

The Wall Street Journal | "Elbridge Colby responds on the defense of Taiwan from a Chinese invasion.".....