Elbridge Colby's China defense doctrine is impossible to defend, Plus US firms are pulling back from China, survey finds-- China Boss News 7.18.25

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What happened?

The Wall Street Journal recently profiled Elbridge Colby—the top Pentagon strategist now shaping Trump-era defense doctrine and pulling U.S. focus squarely toward China.

Colby rose to prominence as co-author of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, which reoriented U.S. priorities from counterterrorism to great-power rivalry—with China at the center.

But he caused a bigger stir earlier this month when it emerged that he authored a controversial memo that helped pause arms shipments to Ukraine. Temporary, yes—but it sparked panic in defense circles on both sides of the Atlantic.

Colby believes Washington must stop stretching itself thin across the globe and prepare, urgently, for war in the Indo-Pacific.

Taiwan is the linchpin, he argues. And allies like Japan and Australia need to step up.

But his doctrine carries a dangerous blind spot.

While Colby urges Washington to sideline Europe and pivot hard to Asia, he downplays how tightly China’s global posture is now entangled with Moscow.

Taiwan may be the flashpoint.

But Putin’s the one holding the fuse.

Why it matters.

The Dragon-Bear alliance

When Xi Jinping clasped Vladimir Putin’s hand outside the Kremlin in March 2023 and declared they were “driving changes not seen in 100 years,” it was both a thesis—and a warning.

“Right now there are changes—the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years—and we are the ones driving these changes together,” Xi told Putin as he bid him farewell.

Putin replied: “I agree.”
— Al Jazeera, March 22, 2023

The evolution of the Russia–China relationship—an alliance in all but name—is something I’ve tracked closely. To grasp its weight, as Xi said, rewind a century.

In the 1920s, the Soviet Union was China’s ideological midwife, backing the nascent Communist Party and shaping its rise. That alliance later fractured, but the imprint remains.

Then, as now, Moscow offered more than just material support—it provided templates and tutorship.

Even if the old relationship faded, the ideas Moscow passed on still echo—especially in how modern China, and Xi Jinping in particular, approach power and control.

Xi, unlike most of his technocratic predecessors trained in engineering or economics, holds a doctorate in Marxist theory from Tsinghua.

That alone might make him more receptive to Russian influence—particularly in foreign affairs, where his grasp of the philosophies and forces shaping this century remains underdeveloped.

But I’d argue it goes deeper than that.

China may boast the bigger GDP, but Putin—trained in espionage, strategy, and statecraft—is the tactician. Not necessarily the cleverest of his peers, but more seasoned, more ruthless, and with far more cross-border blood on his hands.

Xi is an old-school ideologue—brutal, yes—but his geopolitical power is constrained by the impossible task of rewiring a brittle, over-leveraged would-be superpower on a tight demographic clock.

Bear in mind, no one—not even Xi—knows China’s true population. Local governments have been inflating the numbers for years.

But Beijing knows it’s bad—far worse than they’re willing to admit. So, it’s a major source of anxiety: a demographic implosion is coming—likely more severe than Japan’s or Europe’s, and far less predictable.

For China, these are matters of national security. But Russia—ever attuned to the vulnerabilities of both friend and foe—will understand them well.

That’s why the Dragon-Bear dynamic isn’t a meeting of equals—it’s a sequencing partnership, racing against time.

Russia shatters the old order so China can construct the new.

In warzones, energy corridors, and sanctions workarounds, Moscow generates the chaos while Beijing handles the rewiring. It’s not friendship—it’s division of labor.

"Stategic Partnership": Why I think Xi and Putin were working towards a Ukranian invasion for months and, probably, years. -- #China Boss #News update 2.25.22

That raises the question, then, Mr. Colby—credentialed though you are: Did Putin teach Xi how to sanctions-proof a state?

And if so, what does that mean for Taiwan?

Xi and Putin may call it a partnership—and it is, at the very least, that.

But the core logic of their pact reads more like a mutual insurance policy: two strongmen clinging to imperial ambition in a 21st century bid for relevance.

Cross-domain awareness

Putin didn’t need coaxing into Xi’s orbit.

He’s been preparing for a confrontation with the West since the Orange Revolution in 2004—long before Xi came to power.

What sealed the bond was mutual necessity: only Beijing had the economic heft and ideological alignment to offer Russia a long-term, sanctions-proof refuge.

In other words—China was Putin’s ticket.

Still, Beijing took convincing.

Many in China still view Russia as ruthless, volatile, and fundamentally untrustworthy.

But for Xi, the risk was worth the payoff. That’s why, earlier this month, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his European counterpart that Beijing doesn’t want Russia to lose in Ukraine.

It wasn’t a diplomatic misstep—it was a calculated signal, meant to pressure Europe, and just as critically, the United States.

Wang—whose return to the top of the ministry likely reflects both Putin’s favor and his ideological alignment with Xi—now treads carefully, balancing loyalty to his boss with the demands of a world where Moscow is both key and liability.

This is what Colby fails to account for.

His framework imagines a clean Indo-Pacific chessboard—where the U.S. can pivot, concentrate, and deter.

But the terrain is convoluted: multi-front, entangled with Russian influence, and shaped by Eurasian power plays. And where’s the study of the Middle Corridor?

Ultimately, how this axis plays out—in a Taiwan flashpoint or in the larger contest over world order—is hard to predict.

Xi could yet distance himself from a weakened Putin. Or Putin may be boxed in by Russian politics before then.

But flawed assumptions aren’t strategy. Back in 2022, neither Ukraine nor Europe wanted to believe Russian troops were massing near the border—but that didn’t stop an invasion.

And just because Nixon split Moscow and Beijing doesn’t mean Trump—or Colby—can do it in reverse, whether by design or by drift.

I’ve spent over 30 years studying the Chinese Communist Party. And I’ll stake that experience on this: if you take Putin’s surgical chaos out of the equation, Xi is left bleeding on the world stage.

That could change under a more globally literate and less internally divisive Chinese leader. But probably not.

The Chinese political system isn’t built on merit. It’s built on the brute strength and durability of red princelings—a stick over a land with more history of fracture than unity.

Equally dysfunctional, though, is Colby’s defense doctrine, carved into compartments: Asia over here, Europe over there—as if the world still played by Cold War rules.

But if Taiwan is the prize, neither Beijing nor Moscow is under any such illusion.

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