Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

Um, I fear that he may be thinking about the use of nuclear weapons.

His Undersecretary of Defense, Elbridge Colby, is said to be busily working on developing a doctrine that would support the use of nuclear weapons again, uh, uh, on, on a first use basis by the United States against Iran, a non-nuclear power, we think.

We don't know whether Iran now has developed nuclear weapons or not, 'cause we don't know what's going on underground in Iran, um, apparently.

So, uh, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm a bit surprised by the lack of response, but I- it's consistent with a theory, with a, a posture that says let's not remind the American people of the defeat that we've suffered in West Asia.

I was on an airplane with Walt Slocum.

Walt had just stepped down as the Undersecretary of Defense in the Clinton administration.

And we were flying back and about five hours into the flight, the pilot came on and said, we have some interference here.

Can you make sure that everybody has their phones off? And so people scramble around, did that.

And this is where it gets very precise.

On the same day as the wreck of Moscow trip, the exact same day, August 27th, Albert Colby, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, stood before the North Atlantic Council in Brussels and said the following.

NATO must change to survive.

Europe, as a wealthy continent, must take primary responsibility for conventional defense and for sustaining military support to Ukraine.

In fact, Donald Trump, when he came to power, he withdrew all foreign aid.

But then very soon he restored in February 2025, he restored foreign aid, military aid to Philippines, which Elbridge Co-Colby, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy only recently described as a model ally, and he did so on his visit to Eastern Asia.

Donald Trump restored a $500 million military aid to Philippines.

Philippines to sure up its defensive is looking everywhere.

Moreover, This is all going on in a context in which the Russians are pushing the envelope on their hybrid war in Europe, while the president denies in the Oval Office that Putin is doing anything to attack Europe.

And the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy is appearing in Brussels with a questionnaire demanding total loyalty from allies and telling them that our priority is the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific, and they need to start making their accommodation to all that, essentially undermining conventional deterrence while not even speaking about the extended nuclear deterrent that the United States maintains in Europe.

So, I mean, to me, this is all – diplomatic malpractice, when you take it all together as a whole, diplomatic malpractice of the worst, absolute worst kind.

And to your point, with which I wholly agree, the idea that Steve Witkoff's, you know, apple polishing for, you know, to put it politely, of Putin is read as anything other than weakness by Putin.

But that starts with a sense of national awareness, with a sense of independence also with a cautious quest for more sovereignty because the exploitation of the allies has not begun recently.

When I talked to former Undersecretary of Defense, Willy Wimmer, who was a CDU parliamentarian for 40 years and who was Vice President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Helsinki Accords, the organization, you know the name.

But He said that basically after 1991-92 he realized that the US had switched economically from cooperation to competition.

And if you go back then to the early 2000s, the diesel scandal, 2010, the diesel scandal, that was economic warfare.