A former Army infantry commander during Desert Storm, Mark Esper is all about not giving up any information that could help an enemy.
But unlike his immediate predecessor, he’s not camera shy.
Esper has held more briefings and given more interviews in the past few months than former Defense Secretary James Mattis did his entire tenure as Pentagon chief.
But he’s a big fan of the Mattis doctrine of projecting power while avoiding predictability in the deployment of troops, ships, and planes.
In many ways, Esper is the perfect person to carry out the national defense strategy crafted by Mattis, says Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
“You don’t need two back-to-back, larger-than-life figures,” says O’Hanlon. “For one thing, Trump doesn’t seem to appreciate the larger-than-life figures beyond a certain point, and second, the Mattis legacy is a pretty good one.”
O’Hanlon interviewed Esper on a wide range of topics this month in a Brookings Institution webinar. Afterward, I asked the veteran national security analyst for his take on Esper’s answers.
“I thought he conveyed a guarded but well-founded confidence that the military is handling COVID pretty well and maybe even a little bit of pride that they had gotten off to a pretty quick and early and good start in a way that maintained high combat readiness and also mitigated the spread of the virus,” O’Hanlon said. “But also, he didn’t exude overconfidence or any kind of complacency about what could be in the future. And he clearly had a couple of concerns, a couple of substantial concerns, over things like getting back to full-scale training.”
Esper has said the U.S. military couldn’t just shut down, especially when a vaccine and effective treatment could be more than a year away.
“The world remains a dangerous place,” he told O’Hanlon. “My view, the view of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of our commanders, civilian leaders, is: There will be a new normal that we will have to adapt to for an extended period of time, at least until we have a vaccine that we’re confident in.”
Esper sees threats abounding, not abating, because of the pandemic.
“We’ve seen Chinese activity pick up in the South China Sea. We see the Russians continue to probe our airspace outside of Alaska and in the northern frontier. We see militia groups busy in Iraq, terrorists active from Africa through the Middle East into Afghanistan,” Esper said. “We remain as sentinels on the guard of the United States.”
The coronavirus does pose a big threat to Esper’s vision of transforming the U.S. military from a force fashioned during the Cold War, a high-intensity conflict, to a more modern force equipped to dominate in space and cyberwarfare.
“We need a 3% to 5% annual real growth, year over year,” Esper says. “I am concerned that the massive infusion of dollars into the economy by the Congress and the executive branch, nearly $3 trillion, may throw us off that course.”
“He’s in a tough spot because he thinks the 3% to 5% real growth is necessary for proper implementation of the national defense strategy, and he knows he’s not going to get that,” says O’Hanlon. “Even in a pre-COVIT-19 world, the Trump administration didn’t project that. Now, he can still hope that would change in a second term, but now, COVID has interceded as well.”
In the event that the Pentagon’s $740 billion budget remains relatively flat in the coming years, Esper’s plan is to accelerate the retirement of so-called legacy weapons systems, things such as M1A1 Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and A-10 Thunderbolt tank-killing aircraft, and use the money for technologies such as hypersonic missiles, artificial intelligence, and cyber and space capabilities.
“When he talks about legacy systems, I think it’s easier to use that abstract phrase than it is to identify which ones you don’t need anymore,” says O’Hanlon.
“You know, maybe you retire a couple of the older drones. Maybe you get rid of the A-10s and let the army handle more of its close-air support with attack helicopters,” he says. “But one person’s legacy system, let’s say the A-10, is another person’s optimal platform for close-air support.”
Perhaps the toughest question O’Hanlon put to Esper was whether the U.S. would really pull all of its troops out of Afghanistan next year if the Taliban fail to keep a pledge to reduce violence or don’t negotiate in good faith.
“I thought he was pitch-perfect because he’s in a tough spot,” said O’Hanlon. “I wouldn’t expect secretary Esper to say, nor should he say, that no matter what, we should stay in Afghanistan with a certain minimum-sized force. He might’ve preferred to say that most people in the national security community don’t really want to schedule a departure from Afghanistan and would rather keep a counterterrorism presence there indefinitely, even if there is a peace deal.”
But Esper knows his boss, President Trump, is anxious to bring all U.S. troops home. Under the current deal, the full withdrawal isn’t scheduled for completion until next year, following the U.S. presidential election.
“Ambiguity is a strategy that both sides seem to be comfortable with because American domestic politics don’t provide a lot of strong support for the mission and because they hope that will actually keep pressure on the Afghan government as well as the Taliban to be serious about negotiation.”
O’Hanlon, who describes himself as a distant, very informal adviser to the presidential campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, told Esper after the interview, “Mr. Secretary, we’re lucky as a country to have you in that job.”
“I think Esper conveys a combination of, you know, not needing to be the big personality or big historical figure of Mattis and being very comfortable implementing the national defense strategy,” he says. “But he’s also not afraid to do what you need to in that job, whether it’s firing the acting secretary of the Navy, whether it’s explaining to the president what his real military options might be in a crisis, or whether it’s putting a little pressure on the services to make some tough decisions on the budget.”
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
