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The deep thinker rising through a shallow Pentagon
Mr Elbridge Colby, an unlikely member of Maga land, is now masterminding the next US National Defence Strategy, slated to be published in August.
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Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Elbridge Colby had already been influential in US President Donald Trump’s first term.
PHOTO: US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENCE
Andreas Kluth
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In national security as in other policy areas, President Donald Trump has been gutting what he derides as the “deep state”, and turning it into what some scholars now call a “shallow state” – a government in which careers depend less on expertise and more on sycophancy.
But even a government of the shallow, by the shallow, for the shallow needs depth in certain functions. This means that the remaining people in the administration who know their brief, as long as they’re also politically adroit, may play an outsized role in setting strategy.
