US military ‘digging in’ along first island chain, Pentagon policy chief says

The Pentagon’s policy chief has declared the first island chain stretching from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines the U.S. military’s primary strategic focus, tying that priority to the recent renaming of its Pacific headquarters.

Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of defense for policy, made the remarks Thursday during an online news conference from Bangkok on his first trip to Southeast Asia in the position.

The Pentagon’s emphasis on the first island chain was a key factor in reverting U.S. Indo-Pacific Command to its former name, U.S. Pacific Command, or PACOM, Colby said.

“The change back to PACOM has multiple reasons, but I think what I would stress here is that the strategic focus of the United States military is really — and consistent with the national security strategy and the national defense strategy — on the first island chain,” he said.

The Hawaii-based command, established by President Harry Turman in 1947, reverted to its original moniker in June. It had been known as U.S. Indo-Pacific Command since May 2018.

The first island chain forms a geographic barrier between China’s coast and the broader Pacific.

Colby said the U.S. approach emphasizes strengthening allies and partners and producing tangible military capabilities rather than “peacocking.”

The U.S. military in recent years has frequently described China and its rapid military buildup as the nation’s “pacing challenge,” but Colby said little directly about Beijing during Thursday’s press conference.

“Everybody knows our position on those issues,” he said. “They’ve been repeated many times in private and public, so we don’t feel the need to tub-thump every day.”

Instead, cooperation with allies and partners should focus on quietly and consistently strengthening deterrence and military capabilities, accompanied by well-advised rhetoric, Colby said.

The longtime advocate of concentrating U.S. military resources in the Pacific also visited Manila and Jakarta on his trip and was headed to Phnom Penh.

During a Monday speech at the Stratbase Institute in Manila, Colby said the United States seeks a favorable balance of power in the region through “deterrence by denial” along the first island chain, developing forces capable of preventing an adversary from achieving its objectives rather than relying primarily on retaliation threats.

“We are not leaving,” he said. “In fact, we are digging in.”

The Philippines is making sites available to U.S. forces, and four Coast Guard fast-response cutters will work with the Philippine coast guard to patrol and secure the country’s waters, Colby said.

“Our priority is to field a fully operational, resilient architecture of denial defense stretching along the first island chain,” he said.

Colby’s earlier stated positions — that the U.S. should focus on its Pacific interests and less so on Europe and the Middle East — have their critics in Congress and elsewhere.

“Colby was unable to lay out a clear vision of how more Southeast Asian defense spending and increased defense industrial production would mesh with the U.S. First Island Chain strategy without entrapping Southeast Asia in an anti-China alignment,” Carlyle Thayer, emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales and lecturer at the Australian Defence Force Academy, said by email Thursday.

Southeast Asian states view a U.S. military presence as a counterbalance to China that keeps sea lanes secure, he said.

However, U.S. tariffs and a Chinese charm offensive means Southeast Asian governments are hedging their bets, Patricio Abinales, a professor at the University of Hawaii’s School of Pacific and Asian Studies, said by email Thursday.

Paul Buchanan, an American security analysis based in New Zealand, offered a similar assessment.

Regional U.S. partners “would do well to take the claims and promises with a large grain of salt and hedge-plan accordingly,” he said by email Thursday.