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Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Monday, further upsetting a government facing uncertainty over the US president’s refusal to acknowledge the electoral defeat of Democrat Joe Biden.
With just 10 weeks left of his tenure in the White House, the move raised concerns that Trump could target other national security officials with whom he has expressed disappointment.
According to various reports, he is also believed to be considering firing FBI Director Chris Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel, angry that they did not support his battle for re-election.
The Washington Post reported that Trump had already removed the official in charge of the program that produces the government’s climate change reports, a move that would allow him to be replaced by someone with views closer to Trump’s skepticism about global warming.
Esper’s firing prompted warnings from high-ranking politicians and former officials not to further destabilize the government.
Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was “deeply concerned” about Esper’s impeachment.
“The last thing our country needs is additional agitation in institutions designed to protect our national security,” Warner said in a statement.
“President Trump must not invite further volatility by removing any intelligence or national security official confirmed by the Senate during his time in office,” he said.
Retired Admiral James Stavridis, a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, said Trump is “playing with fire with the security of our nation.”
“If Trump happens to fire the head of the CIA and the head of the FBI, both true professionals and patriots, we will be in uncharted waters for the next 90 days,” Stavridis wrote on Twitter.
– Under the radar –
Esper was Trump’s fourth defense chief in four years, and his impeachment capped a stormy relationship between the Pentagon and the president.
Like his predecessors, Esper, 56, sought to fly below the political radar to avoid Trump’s wrath.
But they eventually collided with pressure from the White House to deploy federal troops to quell civil unrest, and Trump’s desire for a swift withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan before the defense system felt secure.
“Mark Esper has been fired,” Trump abruptly declared on Twitter Monday.
“I would like to thank you for your service.”
– Financing the border wall –
Esper, a West Point classmate of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, worked for years in the defense industry before joining the Pentagon as secretary of the army in 2017.
He became Secretary of Defense in July 2019, carried out fundamental reforms in the massive Pentagon bureaucracy, and tried to reshape America’s global defense posture to focus on China.
Esper complied with some of Trump’s wishes, launched a separate Space Command and, when Congress was not funding it, moved billions of dollars of weapons and base maintenance programs for the construction of a wall on the border between states. United and Mexico to block illegal immigrants.
He also slashed US forces in Syria as Trump sought to fulfill his 2016 election promise to bring in troops from abroad.
– ‘Preserving my integrity’ –
But even while dodging the controversy, Esper couldn’t help but collide with the commander-in-chief.
After violent anti-racism protests sometimes swept across the country following the police assassination of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, Trump sought support from the Pentagon to deploy regular troops.
Both Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley made it clear that they disagreed with the idea, allegedly enraging Trump, who later publicly denigrated the Pentagon chief by calling him “Yesper.”
More tension came in June when Trump announced, apparently without informing Esper, that he would cut the number of US troops in Germany in half.
And then Trump pushed for a faster withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan than originally planned after the February 29 US-Taliban peace accord.
Esper backed down quietly but stiffly, insisting that the level will remain at 4,500 troops after this month, until the Taliban deliver on promised reductions in violence.
In an interview last week with the Military Times that took place before his impeachment, Esper said he had defended the Pentagon as an institution while “preserving my integrity in the process.”
“Name another cabinet secretary who has been rejected,” he said.
Trump appointed Christopher Miller, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, as Acting Secretary of Defense.
Miller is a 31-year-old retired Army veteran who deployed to Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 with special forces, was Trump’s White House adviser on counterterrorism, and served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations from January to August 2020.
pmh / to / jh / bgs
