“’One of the very odd pathologies of Washington and the defense establishment is this enthrallment with the Middle East, which just isn’t that important,’ said Elbridge Colby, a former senior Pentagon official in the Trump administration. ‘America has become energy independent. And we’re not very good at achieving our preferred outcomes in the Middle East.’
“Mr. Colby was the main author of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, which recommended turning America’s war-fighting focus to the ‘revisionist powers’ of China and Russia…”