PORTRAIT : Elbridge Colby at Ramstein — The American Strategist Who Still Believes in a Ukrainian Victory

Introduction: One Man Alone in the Room

The Colby paradox

On June 18, 2026, in Brussels, in the corridors of NATO headquarters, a man addressed by video the representatives of nearly fifty nations gathered for the 35th session of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group — what the whole world now calls the Ramstein format. His name is Elbridge Andrew Colby. He is 46, carries a name that has resonated in American intelligence circles for three generations, and has a reputation that precedes him like a sharp blade: that of Washington's greatest skeptic of US support for Ukraine.

And yet, on this June 18, Colby declared before all of Ukraine's allies that the situation on the ground had improved, that the front was holding, that victory was not a chimera. He pressed Europeans to do more, invest more, not let go. This is not a reversal. It is something far more complex, and far more revealing of the true nature of this man and the geopolitical moment we are living through.

The reluctant architect

Elbridge Colby is not a simple figure. He is the US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy — the third most powerful civilian at the Pentagon, according to those who know how to count. He was confirmed in that role on April 8, 2025, following a December 2024 nomination by Donald Trump. He is the principal architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, that pivotal document which redirected America toward great-power competition, with China as the central threat. But at Ramstein, on June 18, 2026, he was the one who stood before the world to support Ukrainian resistance. How to explain this apparent contradiction?

To understand Colby at Ramstein, one must understand Colby himself — his trajectory, his obsessions, his blind spots, and his singular way of reading the world. And to understand Colby, one must go back well before NATO conference rooms.

Heir to an Empire of Shadows

William Colby, the shadow that never fades

The name Colby is never spoken in American intelligence circles without another figure immediately surfacing: William Egan Colby, CIA director under Nixon and Ford, OSS operator during World War II, the man who shocked Washington by disclosing the Agency's "family jewels" before the Church Committee in 1975 — the assassinations, the coups, the illegal operations. William Colby believed institutions must be held accountable, even when it hurts. It is this grandfather that Elbridge Andrew Colby III — yes, he carries the third — grew up admiring.

His father, Jonathan Colby, built his career in international finance, notably at First Boston in Tokyo in the 1980s, before joining the Carlyle Group — that private equity consortium with deep connections to the defense industry. It was in Tokyo that Elbridge spent his formative years, from 1986 to 1992, between ages seven and thirteen, attending the American School in Japan in Chōfu. A childhood between two worlds, two civilizations, two ways of conceiving power. This matters: Asia is not for Colby a strategic abstraction. It is something visceral, anchored in memory.

Groton, Harvard, Yale: an elite formation

Back in the United States, young Elbridge attended Groton School, that elite Massachusetts boarding school, graduating in 1998 — already editor of the student newspaper. He continued to Harvard, earning a Bachelor of Arts in history in 2002. Then Yale Law School, where he obtained his J.D. in 2009. In between, he made an unexpected detour: in 2003, before resuming law school, he joined the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He saw firsthand what a badly conceived war looks like — an improvised occupation, an empire that has stretched too far from its foundations. This experience forged his realism like a furnace.

Because Colby did not leave Yale converted to neoconservatism. Quite the opposite. He read John Mearsheimer, the great theorist of offensive realism at the University of Chicago. He understood that power is finite, resources are limited, and choosing one's battles is not cowardice but strategic wisdom. He saw in Baghdad what the cost of exported democratic hubris looks like. And he drew conclusions that many of his contemporaries refused to own.

The Architect of the "Strategy of Denial"

2018: the doctrine that changes everything

From 2014 to 2017, Colby was a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), the think tank founded by Michele Flournoy and Kurt Campbell, two figures of Democratic defense policy. In May 2017, the first Trump term called him to the Pentagon as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development. In that role, he drove the drafting of the 2018 National Defense Strategy — a watershed document that abandoned the war-on-terror paradigm for great-power competition, with China and Russia as the central challenges.

This document is Colby's principal achievement. He owns it completely. The priority is clear: the Indo-Pacific theater. Taiwan is the pivot. China is the existential stake. Everything that diverts American resources from this main front is, in his logic, a luxury Washington cannot afford. This is where his skepticism about massive aid to Ukraine originates: not from indifference to Ukraine's fate, but from the conviction that every dollar and every missile sent to Kyiv is a dollar and a missile unavailable for Taiwan's defense.

The book that defines a generation of strategists

In 2021, after leaving the Pentagon, Colby published at Yale University Press The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict. The Wall Street Journal ranked it among the year's ten best books. The central concept: the United States must adopt a "denial" strategy — preventing China from imposing its regional hegemony in Asia, without seeking to destroy it, without seeking to change its political regime, but maintaining a credible resistance capacity around Taiwan and the first island chain. It is a rigorously defensive doctrine, realist to the bone, refusing military adventures in the name of absolute strategic discipline.

This book earned him the admiration of the "prioritizers" — that group of young conservative thinkers who believe in a strategic "America First" grounded not in isolationism but in radical threat prioritization. It also earned him the wariness of neoconservatives, Atlanticists, and those who rightly note that his prioritization logic leaves Ukraine and Europe in a dangerous blind spot.

Colby and Ukraine: The Central Contradiction

A skeptic who becomes an actor in the support effort

The Colby-Ukraine contradiction is well documented. Before his confirmation, he publicly argued for reducing American aid to Kyiv. His logic: every resource devoted to Ukraine weakens America's posture against China. In July 2025, according to information reported by Wikipedia and other sources, he reportedly initiated a temporary pause in ammunition deliveries to Ukraine — a decision Trump then reversed within days under pressure. In August 2025, he reportedly informed European allies that the United States would play a minimal role in any security guarantee for Ukraine.

This is troubling. It sketches a man who, from his Pentagon office, actively sought to limit American engagement in Ukraine. And yet, a few months later, on June 18, 2026, this same man addresses the Ramstein format and declares: "Indeed, without being hyperbolic, over the last few months we have reason to think that Ukraine's situation has even improved." That sentence deserves to be weighed carefully.

The Colby logic: not abandonment, but burden transfer

To understand this apparent contradiction, one must grasp the internal coherence of the Colby doctrine. He is not pro-Russian. He is not indifferent to a Ukrainian defeat. He simply believes it is not primarily America's burden to carry — it is Europe's. This is precisely what he said at Ramstein: since the beginning of the Trump administration, the United States has maintained that Europe "could and should take the lead role in ensuring its own defense, including by providing the majority of support to Ukraine." And according to him, Europeans have progressively assumed that role. In his mind, this is not a betrayal of Ukraine — it is a normalization of European strategic responsibility.

Within this logic, the PURL (Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List) mechanism is the perfect synthesis of Colby's vision: the United States supplies the weapons, its defense industry produces them, but Europeans pay. Colby explicitly emphasized at Ramstein the importance of continuing and amplifying support via the PURL, noting that it "will help ensure the continued flow of key US materiel to the Ukrainian front lines." The language is surgical, cold — but the result is real: weapons arrive.

What Ramstein Reveals About the Man

A presence via screen, a voice that carries weight

Colby participated in the 35th Ramstein format meeting on June 18, 2026 via video — he was not physically in Brussels. This detail matters: it illustrates the American positioning in this conflict. Present but at a distance. Engaged but not on the front line. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was there in person. Zelensky was there in person. Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, British co-chair Dan Jarvis, and Germany's Boris Pistorius were all physically present. Colby was speaking from a screen.

But if his image was on a screen, his words resonated in the room. He told allies to "not lose sight of the task ahead," that "much has been accomplished, but much more remains to be done." He called for maintaining and even increasing support to Ukraine via the PURL. And he formulated a sentence which, given his reputation, takes on particular weight: Ukraine "continues to lay the foundation for a durable peace, grounded in Russia's understanding that perpetuating this war is not only condemnable, but will not pay off."

The Ramstein result: $4 billion in a single day

The 35th Ramstein meeting on June 18, 2026 was one of the most fruitful in terms of announcements since the conflict began. Ukrainian Defense Minister Fedorov announced that contributions totaled approximately $4 billion, including nearly $1 billion for the PURL program — the largest PURL amount ever announced at a single meeting. The United Kingdom committed £752 million to fund 150,000 Ukrainian drones and more than 350 air defense missiles and radar systems, all financed from revenues of immobilized Russian assets. The Netherlands announced approximately 700 cruise missiles and a €500 million package. Germany pledged an additional $400 million for Ukrainian air defense.

It was in this record-setting meeting that Colby took the floor to support the effort. And even if he did so from a screen, even if his logic remains that of burden transfer to Europe, his voice counts. The Pentagon remains NATO's strategic center of gravity. When Colby says Ukraine's situation has improved and support must continue, allies listen. This is not rhetoric — it is institutional weight.

The Man vs. China, and the Tension With Ukraine

The Indo-Pacific fixation as mental operating system

To grasp Colby's internal tensions, one must understand that his relationship to Ukraine is inseparable from his relationship to China. China is his central obsession, his intellectual horizon, the tectonic force around which his entire strategic edifice is organized. Since his childhood in Tokyo, since reading Mearsheimer at Harvard, since his first visits to Northeast Asia, Colby has internalized a certainty: China is the only power capable of challenging the Western world order in an existential and durable way. Russia is dangerous but regional and declining. Iran is problematic but limited. North Korea is nuclearized but contained. Only China has the economic, technological, and military means to supplant the United States.

This conviction generates the tension: if America spends its military, industrial, and political resources in Ukraine, it exhausts itself for whose benefit exactly? For Colby, the logical answer is: for nothing strategically decisive for Washington, at the expense of the real front. This is why he has argued for Europeans to assume more, for the PURL to be the dominant model, for America to remain involved without being the sole burden-bearer. This is not abandonment — it is reallocation. But the boundary between the two can be thin when Kyiv is under bombardment.

The Beijing mission and public contradictions

In May 2026, according to the South China Morning Post, Colby was reportedly being considered to lead a high-level American delegation to Beijing, in preparation for a possible visit by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. This prospect illustrates Colby's other face: he talks to the enemy; he views strategic communication with China as indispensable to stability. This is not weakness in his intellectual framework — it is risk management. Colby is not a warmonger, neither against Russia nor against China. He believes in deterrence, credible force, and negotiation grounded in that force.

But these back-and-forths between "prepare for war with China" and "talk to Beijing," between "reduce aid to Ukraine" and "salute Ukraine's improving situation at Ramstein," leave an impression of a navigator without a fixed compass — or rather, a man whose compass is fixed (China) but whose tactical adjustments are so numerous they blur the signal. That is Colby's fundamental contradiction: consistent in his doctrine, but legible as opportunistic in his individual positions.

The PURL as Colby's Doctrine Incarnated

A mechanism of cold genius

The PURL — Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List — is one of the most ingenious constructions of American defense policy in the 2020s. The principle: the United States identifies Ukrainian weapons needs, its defense industry produces or supplies the equipment, and European allies and partners finance the purchases. America remains the supplier, it keeps its defense industrial base active, it generates sector employment — but it is not the American taxpayer who directly bears the cost of aid to Ukraine.

This mechanism is, in its design, a perfect illustration of Colby's vision: keeping allies accountable, maintaining America in the decision loop without being the sole payer, ensuring the flow of weapons to Ukraine does not dry up. At Ramstein on June 18, nine countries confirmed their PURL participation for a total exceeding $1 billion — Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, and Sweden in the lead. Colby emphasized this figure as proof of concept: "This will help ensure the continued flow of key US materiel to the Ukrainian front lines."

The limits of the model

But the PURL has limits. It depends entirely on European political will to fund, on American industrial capacity to produce, and on the delay between announcement and actual delivery. On the front, Ukrainian soldiers do not need announcements — they need shells, missiles, drones. Fedorov himself emphasized after the meeting that "quality and focus" had changed, but that "the road is still long." Canada is awaiting commitments, Hungary is blocking certain NATO transfers, and supply chains remain fragile.

Furthermore, dependence on the PURL creates a structural vulnerability: if European political will weakens — through elections, economic crisis, fatigue — the flow stops. And Colby has no answer to this fragility beyond saying Europeans must continue. This is not a guarantee. It is a wish. And in a war, wishes are not worth much without the structures that sustain them.

Israeli Espionage and the Strategist's Vulnerability

A man under surveillance

In June 2026, the New York Times, cited by several media outlets including Zerohedge, revealed that the US Defense Intelligence Agency had raised its counterintelligence threat level for Israel to the highest category — "critical" — due to growing concerns about Israeli surveillance operations targeting senior American officials. Among the named personalities cited in the report: Elbridge Colby, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, and Deputy Policy Director Michael DiMino IV.

The fact that Colby appears on this list is significant. He is one of the few senior Pentagon officials to have publicly called for a "reset" of the US-Israel relationship. In Colby's logic, Israel is not the indispensable ally that neoconservatives have erected into dogma — it is a strategic partner whose interests sometimes diverge from Washington's, notably in managing Iran and Middle Eastern stability. This courageous position earned him enemies in Tel Aviv, and apparently, according to these revelations, particular attention from Israeli intelligence services.

The solitude of the realist

This affair reveals something deeper about Colby's position in the Washington landscape. He is attacked by neoconservatives for being insufficiently Atlanticist. He is attacked by Atlanticists for being insufficiently invested in Europe's defense. He is under surveillance by a close ally whose sensibilities his positions offend. He has been criticized by Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Mitch McConnell for his Ukraine positions and deficient communications with Congress. And he is simultaneously preparing a strategic dialogue with China while managing the fallout of a war in Europe.

Colby is isolated on nearly every front. This is often the sign of a man who is right too early or too completely. Or a man whose internal coherence generates friction with everyone because it fits perfectly into no camp's agenda. It is this strategic solitude that makes him fascinating — and, in a certain way, admirable, even when one disagrees with him.

Zelensky and Colby: Two Visions of the Same War

The hero and the strategist

Volodymyr Zelensky was physically present in Brussels on June 18, 2026. He fought for every dollar, every missile, every drone announced that day. He signed with Germany a historic agreement for the joint development of an anti-ballistic defense system. He told allies that "we will have concrete results before winter" on anti-ballistic defense. He thanked the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Norway. He was there — whole, present, embodying his people's resistance.

Colby was on a screen. The metaphor is almost too perfect not to notice. Zelensky is a president who has transformed leadership into an act of physical and moral resistance. Colby is a strategist who thinks the war from the Pentagon, in terms of matrices, capabilities, and lines of force. They do not read the same war. Zelensky lives in the visceral present — his people under bombardment, civilians killed, infrastructure destroyed. Colby inhabits the abstraction of the long term — Taiwan, China, power equations twenty years out. Both are right within their respective registers. The tragedy is that they must find common ground.

A tacit agreement on the outcome

And yet, on June 18, 2026, Colby and Zelensky said, in their respective ways, the same thing: the war is holding, Ukrainian resistance has produced results, allies must continue. Zelensky expressed the same cautious optimism as Colby, noting that May had seen a ratio of liberated to lost territory of approximately 100 km² in favor of Ukrainian forces. Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi had reported in early June that Ukrainian defenders had liberated more than 600 km² since the beginning of the year. Colby cited these figures. This is not empty rhetoric — it is factual acknowledgment that the resistance strategy is holding.

But where Zelensky wants to go further — more weapons, more range, more long-distance strikes — Colby holds back. Ukraine has been denied long-range strikes on Russian territory under a "review mechanism" developed by Colby himself. This is the limit of his engagement: he wants Ukraine to hold, not to win too quickly in ways that risk escalation. That calculus may seem cynical. It may also seem prudent. The boundary depends on where one stands.

The West as Center of Gravity: The Colby Dogma

The liberal order as interest, not ideal

A point often misunderstood about Colby: he is not a liberal internationalist. He does not defend the Western world order out of moral or ideological conviction. He defends it because he believes it is in the interest of the United States and its allies to maintain a system in which no revisionist power can impose its hegemony. The distinction matters: an idealist defends Ukraine because it is right. Colby defends it — to the extent he does — because a Ukrainian defeat would send a devastating signal to Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, all the countries that stake their security on American credibility.

This logic led him to say at Ramstein that Ukrainian resistance "lays the foundation for a durable peace grounded in Russia's understanding that this war will not pay off." This is not compassion for Ukraine — it is deterrence by example. If Putin's Russia wins, Xi Jinping's China takes note. If Russia loses or bleeds into stalemate, China recalculates. That is why even Colby, the great Ukraine-aid skeptic, cannot afford to let Ukraine collapse.

Trump as necessary tool in the Colby doctrine

Colby was nominated by Trump and believes — apparently sincerely — in a form of coherence between his vision and the president's. He said at Ramstein that the peace being sought is sought "under the visionary leadership of President Trump." This protocol formulation should not deceive: Trump is, for Colby, a useful political instrument. He carries the banner of the break with exhausting Atlanticist globalism. He forced Europeans to take responsibility. He questioned NATO's automatisms in a way that, per Colby's logic, was necessary for the alliance to become more resilient and less dependent on a single payer.

But Trump is also unpredictable, emotional, and capable of reneging in a tweet on what Colby has patiently constructed doctrinally. The Trump-Colby contradiction is there too: Colby believes in rigorous, coherent strategy; Trump believes in improvisation and instinct. The fact that Trump reversed in days the ammunition delivery pause initiated by Colby in July 2025 says everything about this relationship: Colby proposes, Trump disposes, and this uncertainty is perhaps the greatest structural risk in current American defense policy.

Europe, Responsibility, and Strategic Burden

Pistorius's message: Europe takes the relay

In Brussels on June 18, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius delivered a speech that resonates perfectly with Colby's vision. In an exchange with journalists on the summit's sidelines, Pistorius said what was "absolutely correct and foreseeable for a long time": Europe must assume greater responsibility for its own defense and deterrence. He acknowledged that the American strategic reorientation toward the Indo-Pacific was a structural given, not a Trump whim. He emphasized the need for a coordinated transition to avoid "dangerous gaps in Europe's defense capabilities."

Germany, under Pistorius, is living that change. A brigade of more than 2,900 German soldiers is deployed in Lithuania. By end of 2027, this brigade will grow to approximately 5,000 fully operational soldiers. Multinational command structures are being reinforced in Latvia and Estonia. Germany is taking the lead on NATO's eastern flank — a historic shift, sixty years after the Bundeswehr's rearmament, seventy years after the Nazi capitulation. Colby built the conceptual framework for this transfer. Pistorius is implementing it. The model works, provided it holds.

European blind spots

But Pistorius himself acknowledged the uncertainty: "The decision on which functions European allies will take on in the event of a reduction in American presence has not yet been made." That is a significant admission. The post-American European security architecture does not yet fully exist. It is under construction. And while it is being built, Ukraine is fighting. The risk is that the transition takes longer than the war, leaving a strategic vacuum Moscow could exploit.

Colby bets that Europeans will find the way. He has no choice — his entire strategic framework rests on this assumption. If Europe stumbles, if allied cohesion fractures, his doctrine collapses with it. And he with it. Perhaps this is why his Ramstein intervention was so insistent on the need to "not lose sight of the task." This is not polite encouragement: it is a secular prayer from a realist who knows his bet can go wrong.

The Nuclear Question and Danger Zones

Colby facing escalation

One of the least commented aspects of Colby's doctrine, but one of the most important, is his conception of nuclear escalation. Colby is deeply marked by his early career work at the CNA (Center for Naval Analysis), where he studied nuclear deterrence. He believes in the reality of escalation thresholds. This is partly why he developed a "review mechanism" for Ukrainian long-range strikes on Russian territory: fear that strikes too deep could trigger a Russian nuclear response or provoke a conflict widening that no one wants.

This caution is intellectually defensible. But it creates a dangerous asymmetry: Russia freely bombs Ukrainian cities, maternity wards, markets, power plants, while Ukraine is constrained in its reprisals by mechanisms designed in Washington. On June 18, 2026, as Colby was speaking at Ramstein, Ukrainian drones had penetrated Moscow's air defenses and struck the Kapotnya refinery — a notable operational success. But this Ukrainian capability developed despite American restrictions, not because of them.

Putin does not stop of his own free will

The most lucid sentence Zelensky spoke at Ramstein was not about weapons or billions. It was about Putin: "Putin wants everything to burn here, and he is reckless — partners can feel it. Ukraine is ready for negotiations with him regardless." And in the same breath: "But Europe must fully commit so that we negotiate from a position of strength." Zelensky summarized in two sentences what Colby describes across hundreds of pages of doctrine: Russia will not stop because you ask it to. It will stop because it has no other choice.

This is where Colby and Zelensky finally converge. Colby's logic — sustained resistance, increasing costs for Moscow, demonstrating that war does not pay — is precisely the Ukrainian logic. But the difference is urgency: for Zelensky, every day counts, every life counts, every square kilometer counts. For Colby, the horizon is Taiwan and the long-term arc of Sino-American competition. These two time horizons are not always compatible.

Colby and the William Legacy: Transparency as Duty

The Colbys believe in accountability

William Colby entered American history for having — contrary to all expectations of a CIA director — cooperated with the Senate Church Committee in 1975, revealing embarrassing secrets about the Agency's clandestine operations. This choice earned him the hostility of many former colleagues, but it bequeathed to the CIA a culture of accountability that, despite everything, survived the decades. He was a grandfather who believed that truth, however painful, was preferable to the secrecy that protects abuses.

Has Elbridge Colby inherited this conviction? Partially. He is criticized by Republican senators for lack of transparency with Congress — Tom Cotton notably attacked his office for insufficient communication on policy decisions. This does not paint the image of a man who seeks institutional transparency at all costs. But in his public statements, in his interventions like at Ramstein, in his assumed positions on sensitive topics such as the US-Israel relationship, Colby says what he thinks, even when it unsettles.

Israeli surveillance as a revealer

The Israeli surveillance affair deserves to be interpreted through this lens. Colby called for a "reset" of the relationship with Israel — a position that, in the current Washington context, is politically costly. Pro-Israel interests in Washington are powerful, organized, and reactive. The fact that Colby maintained this position despite the political risks it entails says something about his capacity to think American national interest beyond short-term pressures. This is the mark of a real strategist, not a politician.

And this is precisely why his Ramstein intervention on June 18, 2026 deserves to be taken seriously. When a man whose entire doctrine is founded on Asia prioritization and reduced European engagement takes the floor to say that Ukraine's situation has improved and that Kyiv must continue to be supported, this is not rhetoric. It is a signal. A strategic signal, measured, calibrated — but a signal. And in the current war, signals count as much as missiles.

Conclusion: The Realist Who Did Not Walk Away

What Colby's presence at Ramstein really signals

On June 18, 2026, Elbridge Colby could have sent a deputy. He could have been represented by an assistant under secretary, a program director, someone else. He chose to speak himself — even via screen, even at a distance. This choice is not trivial. In the Washington culture of signs and symbols, the word of the Pentagon's third-ranking civilian matters. And he used it to say: Ukraine is holding, support must continue, allies must do more.

He is a complicated man, Elbridge Colby. He slowed weapons to Ukraine. He restricted long-range strikes. He argued for reducing America's European footprint. And yet he is there, at Ramstein, supporting the largest Ukraine support event ever convened, pushing the PURL, acknowledging the improvement on the ground. This is not hypocrisy. It is complex coherence — the kind only true strategists can maintain over the long term, because they see the full arc of history, not just the latest chapter.

A Ukrainian victory, not despite Colby, but with him

Ukraine needs Colby. Not because he is its best friend — he is not. But because he is the man who keeps Washington in the deterrence logic against Moscow, ensures the PURL remains operational, and says at Ramstein what certain allies need to hear. A Ukraine that holds, in Colby's calculus, is a demonstration of strength for Taiwan. That is his equation. And in that equation, Ukraine wins — not because Colby loves it, but because its victory serves his strategic calculations.

The peace Colby seeks — that peace "grounded in Russia's understanding that this war will not pay off" — is not so different from the peace Zelensky seeks. The means diverge. The urgency differs. But the final destination, in both cases, is a sovereign Ukraine in a safe Europe in a world where revisionist great powers have learned that force is not enough. That is a program worth defending — even by a 46-year-old realist speaking from a screen in a room in Brussels.