ESPER AT NATO: Defense Secretary Mark Esper is in Brussels where he will update fellow NATO defense ministers about his trips this week to Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, while pressing the alliance about the importance of continuing the fight against ISIS, in the wake of what he called “Turkey’s unwarranted incursion into northern Syria,” which he said “jeopardizes the gains made there in recent years.”

In a speech and discussion this morning at the German Marshall Fund, Esper took a far different tone than his boss about the Turkish invasion of northern Syria, and the expulsion of the Kurdish forces who had been fighting ISIS with backing from the U.S.