In 2017, he joined the Trump administration as the 23rd secretary of the Army. In 2019, Esper was named acting defense secretary; he was confirmed shortly afterwards as the 27th defense secretary by the United States Senate with a vote of 90–8.[1] He was fired by President Donald Trump by tweet on November 9, 2020.
Esper served as an infantry officer with the 101st Airborne Division and deployed with the "Screaming Eagles" for the Gulf War. His battalion was part of the famous "left hook" that led to the defeat of the Iraqi Army.[10][8] He later commanded an airborne rifle company in Europe and served as an Army fellow at the Pentagon.[7] Esper served on active duty for more than ten years before moving to the Army National Guard and later the Army Reserve, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel.[11] Esper is a recipient of the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service. Among his military awards and decorations are the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal, Kuwait Liberation Medal, and the Combat Infantryman Badge.[12]
Esper was chief of staff at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, from 1996 to 1998.[13] From 1998 to 2002, Esper served as a senior professional staffer for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. He was also a senior policy advisor and legislative director for U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel.[14] He was policy director for the House Armed Services Committee from 2001 to 2002. From 2002 to 2004, Esper served in George W. Bush's administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense for negotiations policy, where he was responsible for a broad range of nonproliferation, arms control and international security issues. He was director for national security affairs for the U.S. Senate under Majority LeaderBill Frist from 2004 to 2006.
President Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate Esper as Secretary of the Army on June 19, 2017.[18] He was Trump's third nominee for the position, following the withdrawals of Vincent Viola and Mark E. Green.[19] He was confirmed to this post by an 89–6 vote of the U.S. Senate on November 15, 2017[20] and sworn in on November 20, 2017.
During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee in November 2017, Esper said that he would have three priorities as Army secretary: readiness, modernization (including of the military acquisition process and personnel system), and efficiency.[21][22]
The Army Vision
In mid-2018, Esper published a new Army Vision that outlined the goals he wanted to achieve by 2028, as well as the ways and means to get there. The Vision focused the service on China as the pacing threat in a future high-intensity conflict. The top line goals were growing the force to more than 500,00 active-duty soldiers, building a talent-based “perform or out” personnel system, re-engineering the Army acquisition system by establishing a “Futures Command” to modernize the force, and scouring the service’s budget to pay for these improvements.[23][24][25]
Recruiting Reform
After missing its recruiting goal in 2017, Esper and his leadership team pursued an overhaul of the service’s recruiting enterprise, with a stated focus on growing the force and emphasizing quality over quantity.[26] The second part of this approach entailed a series of actions aimed at raising recruit standards, such as limiting waivers for applicants with histories of drug use, bad conduct, or mental health issues, and reducing by half the number of recruits that came from the lowest quality tier.[27] At the same time, the Army hired a new marketing firm to refresh its overall approach with a business-like focus on specific objectives.[28] This was complemented by an Army push into online outreach and a variety of social media, such as an Army eSports team, all of which helped Army recruiting during the COVID pandemic.[29] Esper also brought back the World War II–era “pinks and greens” uniform—the iconic Army attire of the greatest generation—as a rebranding initiative and morale booster for recruiters.[30] In late 2018, the Army developed a “22 City” initiative that put a recruiting focus on major U.S. cities that were traditionally underserved, had little interaction with the U.S. military, and produced a lower-than-expected number of recruits annually. The aim was to expand these markets by dramatically increasing the number of Army recruiters, advertising, and visits by senior Army leaders. All of these initiatives began seeing positive results by mid-2019.[31][32]
Army Readiness
In early 2017, the Army’s readiness was at a low point when it came to fighting a near-peer threat like China or Russia. Only a few out of the Army’s thirty-one active-duty brigade combat teams (BCTs) were fully ready to deploy.[33] To address these issues, Esper pursued several initiatives to improve individual and unit readiness. In the spring of 2018, several dozen mandatory training, inspection, and reporting requirements were eliminated.[34] The aim was to reduce those tasks directed from higher echelons that prevented junior officers and NCOs from training their soldiers as they saw best. With regard to unit training, Army forces were directed to focus on high-intensity combat operations against near-peer adversaries. To both drive and measure success, exercises at the Army’s premier National Training Center (NTC) were geared exclusively to these types of operations (which included new forms of warfare such as drone operations) and unit rotations to the NTC were maximized for the first time in years.[35]
Transgender servicemembers
President Trump tweeted his objections to transgender servicemembers in July 2017, and, under his Presidential Memorandum of August 25, 2017, he required the Department of Defense to produce a report on this subject.[36] Esper was asked by reporters in February 2018 whether soldiers had concerns about serving beside openly transgender individuals. He replied: "It really hasn't come up."[37]
After Esper was nominated to become Secretary of Defense, he said that he had met several transgender service members and was impressed with them. Nonetheless, he supported Directive-type Memorandum-19-004, which required service members to meet cisgendered standards associated with their biological sex. Esper claimed it was not a "blanket ban" on transgender service members but rather a policy to ensure that service members are deployable worldwide and can meet military standards without "special accommodations." He said that service members would be individually assessed and that some would be offered waivers to continue serving. In this interview, Esper cited the Defense Department's February 2018 report to support his views.[37]
Secretary of Defense
Temporary appointment and nomination
Esper, with his wife Leah, is sworn in as Secretary of Defense by Justice Samuel Alito on July 23, 2019.
Trump announced the appointment of Esper as Acting Secretary of Defense on June 18, 2019, after Acting Secretary Patrick Shanahan decided to withdraw his nomination.[38] Four days later, it was announced that Trump would nominate Esper to serve as Secretary of Defense in a permanent capacity.[39] On July 15, 2019, the White House formally sent his nomination to the Senate.[40][41] Following his formal nomination, Esper was replaced as Acting Defense Secretary by Secretary of the NavyRichard Spencer, as the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 prevented Esper from serving as acting secretary while his nomination was formally under consideration. During that period, Esper reverted to his position as Secretary of the Army.[42] The Senate Committee on Armed Services scheduled a hearing on the nomination for the next day.[43] On July 22, 2019, the Senate voted 85–6 to invoke cloture on his nomination.[44] On July 23, 2019, his nomination was confirmed by a vote of 90–8.[45]
Tenure
Esper hosts Saudi prince Khalid bin Salman at the Pentagon, August 29, 2019Esper inspects troops alongside Vietnamese defense minister Ngô Xuân Lịch in Hanoi, November 20, 2019
Esper has said that his operating positions as Secretary of Defense would be apolitical, in keeping with the National Defense Strategy formulated in 2018 by his predecessor Jim Mattis.[46]
Esper met with his European counterparts in February 2020 to discuss basing options for a new United States Army headquarters in Europe, bearing the name "V Corps" that had originally been established in World War I but was inactivated while stationed in Germany in 2013. Esper stated the new headquarters was needed to improve military coordination among NATO partners.[47]
In response to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020, which included $738 billion in defense spending, Esper said: "I’m good with those dollars. No complaints."[48] Esper provided a framework for members of Congress to insert a proviso in the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which guides the naming of military installations.[49]
Firing of the Secretary of the Navy
On November 24, 2019, during a dispute regarding whether Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher would be stripped of his Trident pin, Esper fired the United States Secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer. The Department of Defense attributed the firing to Spencer privately proposing to the White House (without informing Esper and contrary to Spencer's public position) an arrangement to let Gallagher retire while keeping his Trident pin. On November 25, Esper stated that Trump had ordered him to stop the Navy from conducting a peer review regarding Gallagher's right to wear the pin. Esper said he previously supported the peer review, but followed Trump's order.[50] Meanwhile, Trump cited the Gallagher case as the primary reason for Esper's firing of Spencer, while also citing "large cost overruns" in the Navy.[51]
Withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan
On February 29, 2020, the Trump administration signed a conditional peace agreement with the Taliban, which called for the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan within 14 months, if the Taliban uphold the terms of the agreement.[52][53] In May 2020, Esper said: "I don’t put a timeline on it. We have a timeline of May of next year but that timeline was premised on everything moving at a set pace."[54]
Withdrawal of U.S. forces from Germany
Esper (far right), President Donald Trump, and Polish president Andrzej Duda at the White House on June 24, 2020.[55]
In 2020, Trump directed the Pentagon to remove 11,800 of the nearly 35,000 American troops stationed in Germany.[56] Trump said the move was partially influenced by U.S. frustration with Nord Stream 2gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, owned by Russia's Gazprom; cited Germany's unwillingness to spend more on defense in support of NATO and accused Germany of being "very delinquent"; and said of Germany, "They make a fortune off the troops. They build cities around our troops. ... We'll let ourselves get rich first."[56] While Trump framed the withdrawal as an act of retribution against the Germans, Esper cited a different rationale, framing the decision in strategic terms,[57] although he acknowledged that Trump's anger at German military spending "accelerated" the process.[58] Esper agreed with Trump that Germany was a "rich country" that "can and should pay more for its defense."[59]
The idea for a significant reduction of troops from Germany originated from the White House, where it was pushed by two Trump advisers, Robert C. O'Brien and Richard Grenell.[60] Defense Department officials were largely cut off from the decision making, and they feared that the partial withdrawal from Germany would inhibit regional defenses against Russia.[60] Esper had significant concerns about the plan, but avoided publicly criticizing it and worked to implement Trump's directive.[60] Esper reportedly believed that Trump's demand for speedy troop withdrawal was logistically impossible;[60] the Associated Press reported that "A number of NATO diplomats and officials have suggested the pullout—which would be costly and might not even be logistically possible before the U.S. elections in November—probably won't happen."[61]
Trump's announcement of the withdrawal of U.S. troops was made without consultation with Germany[61] or other NATO allies.[62] In June 2020, Esper traveled to NATO headquarters in Brussels to meet with NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg and to reassure him that the U.S. would not announce any further troop movements or reductions without first consulting with NATO allies.[61]
Esper with Turkish defense minister Hulusi Akar at NATO headquarters in Brussels, June 2019
COVID-19 pandemic
The Department of Defense’s role in combatting the COVID-19 pandemic began in mid-January 2020, when the department began tracking cases worldwide. On February 1, 2020, weeks before the first person in the U.S. would succumb to the virus, the Defense Department implemented its pandemic global response plan. [64][65]
Three days prior, on January 29, 2020, the military welcomed the first plane load of Americans evacuated from China into March Reserve Air Base in California, and then quarantined and cared for them for several weeks. This type of operation occurred multiple times over a period of months across several military installations and states.[66]
On January 30, a week after the first COVID case in America was detected, Esper issued the first of what would eventually become a dozen medical guidance memos to the department on how to protect the military and civilian personnel from COVID.[67][68]
As the coronavirus outbreak turned into a pandemic in early March 2020, Esper directed overseas commanders of U.S. forces to check with him before taking actions to protect U.S. troops, lest they contradict the Trump administration's messaging on the coronavirus. Esper said that "My No. 1 priority remains to protect our forces and their families."[69] The following week, Esper directed the deployment of two Navyhospital ships, the USNS Comfort and the USNS Mercy, to take pressure off New York and Los Angeles hospitals as they coped with the pandemic.[70] Esper also authorized the Defense Department to provide civilian health authorities with five million respirator masks and 2,000 specialized ventilators.[71]
On April 14, 2020, Esper announced the extension of a travel freeze on military members and Department of Defense civilian employees. The original order to stop movement was to last for 60 days, but Esper said that additional time was needed to stop the spread of the virus.[75] Several days following the announcement, Esper extended the freeze through June 30, 2020.[76]
Lawmakers, retired officers and experts criticized Esper's response to the coronavirus, describing it as slow and indecisive. According to Politico, there was discontent within the Department of Defense about Esper's leadership on the issue. Esper primarily left it up to local commanders in terms of how they would respond to the pandemic, which resulted in uneven responses. Several military officials said there was a lack of top-down planning and guidance on important decisions.[73] In a letter in late April 2020, ten Democratic senators called Esper's leadership "disjointed and slow", saying that DOD's civilian leadership had "failed to act sufficiently, quickly, and has often prioritized [combat] readiness at the expense of the health of service members and their families."[77] A Pentagon spokesman defended DoD's handling of the pandemic.[78][79]
In May 2020, at an event marking the 75th anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe, Esper was criticized for interacting with seven World War II veterans who were between the ages of 96 and 100 without wearing a facemask. In response to critics, the administration said that Esper and the veterans were tested before the event.[80]
George Floyd protests and Insurrection Act
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According to multiple reports, on June 1, 2020, amid nationwide civil unrest arising from the murder of George Floyd by police, Trump at one point demanded the deployment of 10,000 active-duty troops to the streets of Washington and other U.S. cities in a heated meeting in the Oval Office with Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of StaffMark Milley, who opposed this request.[81][82][83] Trump's spokesperson Alyssa Farah and Attorney General William Barr denied that Trump had requested the deployment of 10,000 active-duty troops, with Barr saying instead that Trump wanted troops on "standby."[81]
Esper participated in a June 1 call with state governors, Trump, and Barr, in which Trump urged governors to "dominate" and use aggressive methods.[84] During the call, Esper said, "I think the sooner that you mass and dominate the battlespace, the quicker this dissipates and we can get back to the right normal."[84] Esper's suggestion that American cities were a "battlespace" prompted significant criticism,[85][86] including from former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Martin E. Dempsey and former Special Operations Command head Raymond A. Thomas.[86] At a subsequent press conference, Esper said that he did not intend the use of the term to focus "on people, and certainly not on our fellow Americans."[87]
On June 1, Esper walked alongside Trump to a photo op in front of St. John's Episcopal Church outside the White House; just prior, police in riot gear and mounted police cleared protestors who started throwing bricks and other projectiles after police began using smoke and flash grenades and a chemical irritant spray [88] from Lafayette Square, clearing a path for Trump, Esper and several other Trump administration officials.[89] Esper's participation in the photo op was criticized by a number of retired senior military officers.[90][91]
Two days later, at a Pentagon press conference, Esper said, regarding the Lafayette Park photo op, that, "Well, I did know that we were going to the church. I was not aware of a photo op was happening," adding, "And look, I do everything I can to try to stay apolitical and try and stay out of situations that may appear political. And sometimes I’m successful at doing that, and sometimes I’m not as successful, but my aim is to keep the department out of politics to stay apolitical."[92]
Esper broke with Trump by publicly opposing invocation of the Insurrection Act of 1807 and the deployment of active-duty troops in American cities, saying that "the National Guard is best suited for performing domestic support to civil authorities ... I say this not only as Secretary of Defense, but also as a former soldier, and a former member of the National Guard. The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act."[93] Esper took steps in the following days to further de-escalate the situation, removing weapons and ammunition from the National Guard, and returning troops to their home bases without notifying the White House. Trump reportedly considered firing Esper over the situation.[94]
On June 6, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) invited Esper and Milley to testify before the committee regarding the events of June 1; they declined. Chief spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in statement that the pair "have not 'refused' to testify'" and that the department's “legislative affairs team remains in discussion" with the committee.[95] HASC chairman Representative Adam Smith later acknowledged in a written letter that Esper and Milley may have been prevented from appearing by the White House.[96] Esper and Milley subsequently agreed to appear before the House Armed Services Committee on July 9.[97] In the meantime, on June 8, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy briefed the committee on the presence of the National Guard in Washington, D.C. on June 1, which was during the protests.[98]
Days later, Esper and Milley responded in detail to a series of questions asked of them by HASC chairman Smith regarding events during the week of June 1. Smith later said the Pentagon had been "reasonably cooperative" in providing witnesses to the committee amid logistical issues during the coronavirus pandemic.[97]
Addressing diversity and inclusion in the U.S. military
Amid the nationwide racial unrest beginning in late May 2020, Esper directed Pentagon civilian and uniformed leaders to come up with ideas that could be used to quickly improve equal opportunity, diversity, and inclusion in the Armed Forces; established an internal Defense Board on Diversity and Inclusion in the Military to recommend ways to increase racial diversity and ensure equal opportunity across all ranks, especially in the officer corps, by December 2020; and created a Defense Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion in the Armed Services, mirroring the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.[99][100][101]
On June 18, 2020, Esper said that while the Defense Department has often led on issues of race and discrimination, he cited underrepresentation of minorities in the officer ranks as a particular problem.[102][103]
Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-Spatial Cooperation
After Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, Trump allegedly launched a months-long effort to subvert the election outcome and remain in power, falsely claiming that the election had been "stolen" from him.[106] In his subsequent memoir, published in 2022, Esper wrote that Trump's effort "was a national embarrassment that undermined our democracy, our credibility, and our leadership on the world stage."[106]
On November 9, 2020, days after his election loss, Trump tweeted that Esper was "terminated," and that he had been replaced by Christopher C. Miller, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center who would serve as Acting Secretary of Defense.[107] Esper had written his resignation letter four days earlier, when a winner had not yet been determined.[108]
On January 2, 2021, days before the end of Trump's term and the inauguration of Biden, Esper, along with all other living former secretaries of defense published a Washington Post op-ed piece in January 2021 that rebuked Trump's effort to alter the election results, and said there was no role for the military to change them. The group's piece appeared days after Trump ally Michael Flynn, an ex-Army general, and reportedly Trump himself, discussed the possibility of declaring martial law and attempting to stay in power. The group wrote: "Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted. The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived."[109] Esper later wrote that Trump's behavior on January 6, when a mob of his supporters, incited by the president, attacked the Capitol and disrupted the counting of the electoral votes, "threatens our democracy."[110]
After the administration
Memoirs, book tour, and Trump criticism
In November 2021, Esper sued the Department of Defense for preventing the publication of parts of his memoir.[111] He dropped the suit three months later; his attorney said DoD had withdrawn "the overwhelming majority" of its objections to material it had deemed classified.[112]
The memoir, A Sacred Oath, was published in May 2022. In it, Esper wrote that the Trump administration's decision-making process was overtaken by concerns about the president's 2020 reelection. He said he considered resigning several times but remained on concerns he would be replaced by a Trump loyalist who was providing dangerous ideas to the president. Esper wrote that Trump asked him at least twice if the Pentagon could "shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs" and "no one would know it was us." During the 2020 George Floyd protests, Trump sought to deploy 10,000 active duty troops in Washington, asking Esper about protestors, "Can't you just shoot them?" He wrote Trump's top domestic policy advisor Stephen Miller sought to send 250,000 troops to the southern border on the premise that a large caravan of migrants was en route; Esper wrote he responded the Pentagon did not "have 250,000 troops to send to the border for such nonsense." As White House officials watched a live video feed of the raid that killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Esper said Miller proposed beheading al-Baghdadi, dipping his head in pig's blood and parading it around to warn other terrorists. He said he told Miller that would be a war crime; Miller flatly denied the episode occurred. Esper characterized Trump as "an unprincipled person who, given his self-interest, should not be in the position of public service."[113][114]
Esper gave several interviews in 2022 as part of his book tour.[115][116] He described himself in TV interviews and in his memoir as a "Reagan Republican" who is a "fiscal conservative, social moderate, and defense hawk."[117][118] In an interview on Fox & Friends, Esper said that Trump "went too far in too many things."[118] He said he supported the 2021 impeachment of Trump, in which the president was impeached for inciting the January 6 attack on the Capitol, part of a failed bid to overturn Trump's election loss and keep him in power.[115] In an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Colbert pressed Esper on why he criticized Trump in his memoirs, but did not criticize Trump while still in office, or inform the public about what was going on.[116] (In his book, Esper recounted Trump proposing to launch missiles into Mexico and suggesting the idea of sending the military to "just shoot" racial-justice demonstrators in the legs; Esper also recounted his fears that Trump would misuse the military by ordering it to seize ballot boxes or otherwise disrupt the 2020 presidential election.)[115] Esper defended himself as a "circuit breaker" against Trump's most dangerous and erratic tendencies.[116]
In an open letter published in September 2022, Esper, along with Jim Mattis (who preceded him as defense secretary under Trump), as well as a bipartisan group of former top U.S. generals and former defense secretaries, said that the failure to commit to a peaceful transfer of power worsened "an extremely adverse environment" for the U.S. military. The 16-point letter did not mention Trump by name, but was a clear critique of Trump and his followers; the signatories wrote: "Military officers swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, not an oath of fealty to an individual or to an office. It is the responsibility of senior military and civilian leaders to ensure that any order they receive from the president is legal."[119]
In a December 2022 interview, Esper said he supported a merit-based immigration system.[120] In 2023, after the high-altitude Chinese spy balloon was detected and shot down after transited the U.S., U.S. officials disclosed that three suspected Chinese spy balloons had transited the continental United States during the Trump administration, with the intrusions only discovered sometime after Biden took office in January 2021. Esper said that, while in office, he was unaware of previous incidents of Chinese surveillance balloons in U.S. airspace. The Biden administration offered a briefing to top former Trump officials, including Esper, on the new intelligence.[121][122][123][124][125]
Other activities
Esper is currently the Distinguished Chair of the Modern War Institute (MWI) at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.[126]
In 2021, Esper was named the first John S. McCain Distinguished Fellow at the McCain Institute for International Leadership, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank; he is also a member of the Institute's Board of Trustees.[127][128]
Also in 2021, Esper joined the Board of Directors for the Atlantic Council,[129] and was named co-chair (along with Deborah Lee James) of a commission tasked with making recommendations to the Pentagon reform on improving the Defense Department’s ability "to rapidly absorb commercial technologies" from the private sector in order to enhance the U.S. military's warfighting capabilities.[130]
In April 2022, the Washington-based venture capital firm Red Cell Partners announced that Esper had joined the firm as a Partner and Chairman of its national security practice;[131] he is also a member of Red Cell’s Board of Directors.[132]
Esper is a frequent guest on news shows such as CNN, CNBC, Fox News, and Bloomberg, and participates in the professional speaking circuit through the Worldwide Speakers Group.[133]
He is also a member of the Aspen Strategy Group, [134] the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition,[135] and the Council on Foreign Relations.[136]
Awards
Esper received the George C. Marshall Foundation's Andrew J. Goodpaster Award (2021)[137] and the Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute's "Peace Through Strength" Award (2022).[138][139] The President of Lithuania awarded Esper the Cross of Commander of the Order for Merits to Lithuania on March 22, 2023, in the capital, Vilnius. [140]
Personal life
Esper married his wife, Leah Lacy, in 1989.[3][141] The couple has three children.[12][142]
Books
Esper, Mark (2022). A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times. New York: William Morrow. ISBN9780063144316. OCLC1286367288.
^ abEkas, Cindy (September 7, 2017). "Laurel Highlands lauds alumni's achievements". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Trib Total Media. Archived from the original on September 26, 2017. Retrieved September 25, 2017 – via Trib LIVE (triblive.com).
^TBT Staff (March 22, 2023). [Cross of Commander of the Order for Merits to Lithuani "Lithuanian president awards ex-US defense secretary, Portugal's defense chief"]. The Baltic Times. ((cite news)): Check |url= value (help)
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