Marshall here welcome back to the realign.

Happy Monday everyone welcome back to the show as I said straight forward intro to hear on out

Say his guest is a return guest to the realignment. It's name is Elbridge Colby. Otherwise known as bridge Colby

He's the co-founder and principal of the marathon initiative. He served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and forced development in 2017 to 2018

Where he led the development of the 2018 national defense strategy. A lot of us who has written in asking for us to do a show on Taiwan and also asking us to bring bridge back on given his perspective on the issue.

So this episode is all about how what's happening Ukraine affects Taiwan and how what's happening or could happen in Taiwan affects Ukraine. We're going to hit everything from technology to how we should restructure the US military to meet these threats.

All these great router topics bridges down a lot of recent writing on his perspective on Europe Asia where we should position ourselves so lots of great stuff.

Before we get into the episode want to shout out the sub stack I got way too busy with these five episodes last week. So did not send out the sub stack.

Instead it's actually going to go out today on a Monday where I'm going to sum up a lot of things we've been thinking about. So typically this would go out on a Thursday, but I hope you will forgive me during a period where I am doing five episodes a week from sending things that the normal cadence.

So again subscribe to the sub stack it's in the show notes it will come out on Monday this afternoon, but normally will come out on Thursdays. Once again also right and if you are any questions or topics we should cover on the show.

Of course, thank you to the Lincoln Network and once again thanks for sticking around for this series very helpful for me. Hope has been helpful for you too. Here's the episode.

Rich Colby welcome back to the realignment. Great to be with you Marshall. We had you on last September to talk about the strategy of denial, which is your broader book on the US's defense approach to Asia, but this episode we're specifically talking about Taiwan in the wake of Russia's invasion of the country.

So let's just start here. You had a great op-ed out in the Wall Street Journal articulating what could happen should Putin invade Ukraine. This is February 24th, I believe, and you specifically warned against over concentrating US forces in Europe because that could endanger Taiwan and our presence in the Asia Pacific.

So now that we're wow, almost a month into the conflict, how is the US position in Asia relative to the actual moves that they buy to the administration and NATO partners made.

Yeah, well, thanks. I mean, it's it's worrisome. I mean, I think that article I, you know, I think we were right to issue the warning because nothing in the China challenge has changed.

I mean, China hasn't has modified as a challenge to our interests. The reasons we talked about last time. And as you know, as we discussed, I think, you know, we need to sort of not have just like the status, well, we need to have dramatic improvement in our position in Asia.

So what I'm trying to guard against is a kind of lessening or slackening of an increase in prioritization, because if we don't do that, we're on on on the way to the feet in Asia. And the thing is, I mean, there are so far there have been, you know,

there are some deployments that themselves are not the end of the world, but are worrisome and the kind of tail they involve, but there have also been discussions of potentially more significant and lasting deployments and also within the allocation of resources, women and defense establishments.

So that's, that's more what I'm worried about. And the paradox, Marshall, and I, you know, I've been cautious about making this point too strongly, but I think it's becoming increasingly firm. This is the underperformance of the Russian military and Ukraine, thankfully, but it's showing not only maybe they have more problems than we have thought perhaps we have a resident, the Russian military, or they, you know, poorly executed this operation.

But also it's going to take some time to recover as military force. So if anything, I mean, I would say we should do it under any circumstances, but it seems to me that this is less with rent and NATO now, NATO, but European NATO, by the way, is building up its military capabilities, you know, through, you know, because of the response to the invasion.

So that should make it even more advisable because it's more proven to shift to Asia, but that's not where the vibe, the politics, which is an interesting and sort of depressing or disperting dichotomy because the weight of policies actually doubled down in Europe, where if anything, if you look at kind of empirically, this should actually allow us to shift more to Asia.

So let's just go through the specifics of what you just said. So help us understand what you mean by troop deployment numbers. So for example, as you pointed out, sending 5,000 troops to Eastern European members of NATO, that is not going to shift the balance in Asia road, who you're talking about.

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