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Defense Sec Esper tries to stay with his General’s…..

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The Defense Sec has been on the job for a year….

He was the Army Sec before ….

And he’s been pulled from two different directions….

His boss…The President….

And his trips led by their bosses,  the General’s in the Pentagon….

It’s been tough….

Esper has moved to support his General’s and their culture against a boss who would like him and the troops to be ‘his’ , not the countries and does NOT think in strategic national security terms…..

On Thursday, Mark Esper will have served exactly one year as secretary of defense but the last few months have been the toughest of his tenure as tensions with the White House have spilled out in public.

With just under six months to go until inauguration day, Esper is walking a political tightrope. Defense officials tell CNN he has had to make time to focus on day-to-day crisis management alongside chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to try and prevent President Donald Trump from making any disastrous decisions that could damage national security or demoralize the military.
A senior defense official says Esper still has achieved several goals aimed at reshaping the department to make troops more readily able to deploy in a crisis but some within the Pentagon believe it’s possible Esper may be put in a similar position to Trump’s first defense secretary, James Mattis, if the President makes a decision he feels he is unable to accept. Mattis resignedwhen he felt the President made an unacceptable decision by deciding to withdraw troops from Syria.
Some of the decisions Esper could struggle with revolve around Trump’s demand to bring troops home to meet a 2016 campaign promise ahead on November’s election.
By the end of the month, Congress will be briefed on classified Pentagon plans to move nearly 10,000 troops out of Germany — something Trump wants because he says Germany is not spending enough on defense. A defense official told CNN that it’s expected Esper will soften the order to move out, instead rotating troops so there is still a significant wedge against Russian adventurism on Europe’s eastern flank.
Similarly, Trump is threatening to remove troops from South Korea even though North Korea’s Kim Jong Un hasn’t given up his nuclear program. Like Germany, Trump believes South Korea isn’t paying enough for defense so a potential but unlikely drawdown is possible.
Bipartisan members of Congress have already made clear they’d strongly oppose any withdrawal from Germany and any move to draw down in South Korea would be likely to be met with similar opposition because they believe both moves would weaken American national security….

Note….

Esper does have support from lawmakers of both parties in his efforts to throttle some of ‘seat of the pants’ Trump orders for the military…

image…Shawn Thew/EPA via Shutterstock

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