Guided by “A Sacred Oath”: Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper

Speaker 1:

From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism, right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's exchanges and clearing houses around the world. And now, welcome inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange

Josh King:

President Jimmy Carter, sad to say, at age 97 is nearing the end of his long life of service from the United States Naval Academy, from which he graduated in 1946 to his decades of working to strengthen democracy through the Carter Center long after he left office in 1981. I was vaguely aware of who the secretaries of defense were during the Gerald Ford and Carter presidencies for Ford, James Lesinger, Donald Rumsfeld in his first go-round in the role, and Harold Brown under Carter. But it wasn't until Casper Weinberger became Ronald Reagan's defense chief that I really started to take notice. The 15th secretary of defense who served as an army lieutenant in the war in the Pacific and World War II, worked under Governor Reagan in California and also spent time in the private sector as general counsel for the Bechtel Corporation.

Weinberger went right to work at the Pentagon when he was confirmed on January 21st, 1981, the day after Carter left office, when I was a sophomore in high school. And by September of that year, he had published the first edition of Soviet Military Power, a magazine-size digest of the threats America faced from its rival superpower. "It is our duty to have a full awareness of Soviet military growth, modernization, and capabilities to shape our defense forces and our deterrent capabilities accordingly," Weinberger wrote in the preface to his 1983 edition. "We can do no less if we were to provide fully and wisely for our security and that of our allies," he finished.

Even in high school, I combed through that report, cover to cover, as I did each issue of the US Naval Institute's Proceedings magazine, which gave and continues to give readers insight from academics and officers on war fighting capabilities of our own military and that of our adversaries. Weinberger would serve a remarkably long tenure as secretary of defense, six years and 10 months, stepping down on November 6th, 1987, amid the Iran-Contra affair. Now, many credit the defense buildup during those years, the drive toward the 600-ship Navy, among other things, as breaking the back of the Soviet Union and bringing closure to the Cold War. But are we now fully engaged in a new Cold War with a new adversary?

Confronting the rise of the People's Republic of China and its own unprecedented buildup of the People's Liberation Army and Navy is the job of the current Pentagon chief, Lloyd Austin, the 28th secretary of defense. Now Austin's predecessor at the Pentagon, Mark Esper, 27th secretary, spent a lifetime considering the issues that leaders like Weinberger and Austin have confronted and are confronting still. He did it first as a student at West Point, then as an Army infantry officer in Desert Storm, as an advisor to congressional leaders on Capitol Hill, and as an executive in the private sector before his own consequential and tumultuous term as Army secretary, and then his one year and 109 days as SecDef in the service of his commander in chief, the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

In a minute we're going to talk with Secretary Esper about his own life of service, the old threats, the new Cold War and the challenges of staying true to your oath and dominating the battle space in extraordinary times. That's all coming up right after this.

Audio:

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Josh King:

Our guest today, Dr. Mark T. Esper, was the 29th secretary of defense, confirmed by the United States Senate by a vote of 89 to five. Secretary Esper graduated from West Point in 1986 and served in the 101st Airborne Division during Desert Storm as part of his 21-year career in uniform. Mark worked for senators Fred Thompson and Bill Frist on Capitol Hill and at the Heritage Foundation, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the Aerospace Industries Association, and Raytheon, among his think tank and private sector roles.

President Trump nominated Mark as secretary of the Army on June 19th, 2017, and to succeed James Mattis as defense secretary two years after that. The president fired him by Tweet on November 9th, 2020, a week after Trump lost his reelection campaign against Joe Biden. Mark's the author of A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times, published by William Morrow. He chairs the Modern War Institute at West Point and is a partner at the venture firm, Red Cell Partners. Welcome, Mark, inside the ICE house and welcome back to the New York Stock Exchange.

Mark Esper:

Thanks, it's great to be with you. Thank you very much.

Josh King:

So the episode is going to be kind of a tour of the world's trouble spots, Mark, many of which were teed up in A Sacred Oath. But let's start with a little breaking news. Your successor, Lloyd Austin, showed up unannounced in Baghdad this week, committing to a continued US presence in Iraq. So much to unpack with that, Mark. First, what's involved in having a defense secretary just swoop into Baghdad like that?

Mark Esper:

I am curious as to why he went to Iraq now. Is there something else going on? He obviously needed to talk to the Iraqis, probably touched base with our allies, with Israel. There are a number of issues happening there. And of course, there is the burgeoning relationship between Iran and Russia that has the DOD and the White House concerned. I'm concerned as well. So a lot going on in the Mid East, despite what else is happening in the world in both Asia and Europe.

Josh King:

President Biden, in the middle of the night, flew from Andrews to Poland and then got on a 10-hour train trip to Kyiv. A lot of logistics there, a lot of secrecy involved. In your tenure or your time as Army secretary, were these kinds of deceptive moves used to sort of get you into trouble spots without a lot of people seeing?

Mark Esper:

Well, you always have to be concerned about operational security and of course, as an extension, personnel security. And we would do those things at times and we'd fly different type of aircraft or go in the middle of the night to make sure that we can get in safely and eventually back out safely. But those are things you have to do and the department is very practiced at doing it as well.

Josh King:

Biden's trip into Kyiv maybe was known as the first time a president had gone into a war zone where there wasn't an active US military presence. As SecDef, would you have raised questions about that? In your book, you often lay out a lot of the questions you ask when the White House comes up with some big scheme.

Mark Esper:

I thought it was important for him to go. I give him credit for visiting Kyiv at that time, given all that was happening, and giving the message of political support and continued provision of assistance. I thought it was a very good move. And of course, the Secret Service is very good at protecting the president. Other world leaders had traveled to Kyiv and DOD would've supported it. But all in all, I think it was a good trip and a good outcome.

Josh King:

A few weeks ago, Mark, a lot of us were, civilians really, were introduced to the annoyance of Chinese spy balloons for the first time. Traditional news media covered it the way you might expect. Let's have a quick listen.

Audio:

Potentially over some US military sites, do I have that right?

Yeah. So it was last spotted, that we know of, around Billings, Montana. That's a couple hundred miles from Malmstrom Air Force Base, which critically is where the US keeps some of their ICBMs, their Minuteman III ICBMs. That being said it, as far as we know, it was not over that base. US officials were still extremely concerned. So concerned, Halle, that yesterday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, while traveling in the Philippines, convened a meeting of his senior leaders in the middle of the night his time, including chairman of the joint chiefs, General Mark Milley, other DOD leaders, the head of NORTHCOM and NORAD, who was here in DC at the time, convened them to discuss this.

Josh King:

Mark, we know how that episode ended with an F-22 putting a sidewinder through on the coast of South Carolina. But in the weeks since, what have we learned that's not classified? We spent a couple million dollars in Raytheon missiles taking down hobby balloons over Northern Canada.

Mark Esper:

Well, there's obviously a lot here going on that we will learn more about in the coming weeks and months. I mean, we do know that the balloon was first cited all the way back at its launch point at Hainan Island. It was tracked by DOD as it entered the Aleutians and then Alaska and then Canada and then back to the United States. So I think, one, is we had early warning about it happening. What we don't know is why the decision wasn't made to shoot it down when it first entered US airspace in the Aleutians or over Alaska. I doubt that I would've shot it down at that point in time given what we knew. That said, I think President Biden made the right call by not shooting it down over continental United States where it could have harmed Americans and property. So there's that.

The other piece that we don't know is what did the Beijing's leadership know? What did Xi Jinping know? Was this a rogue operation, if you will, by the People's Liberation Army, that they purposefully did without his knowledge? Or was it bureaucratic incompetence that they didn't report up that this was happening? Or did he direct it? And if so, what does all this mean? Because as we know, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had a trip planned to Beijing to rebuild relationships between the United States and China, and this episode upset that cart. And now we see that the US-China relations are worse than they've been in a long time. So I think those remain unanswered questions. I'm not sure we'll ever get the answers to that dynamic, but it has caused us, of course, to re-look our surveillance capabilities and how we deal with balloons flying above 60,000 feet and what does that mean going forward.

Josh King:

Was there any truth to the stories that there were at least maybe three suspected Chinese spy balloons that flew over the US during the Trump presidency?

Mark Esper:

I don't know. As I've said, nobody ever came running into my office alerting me to a Chinese balloon, or I never saw it in a written report. I'm supposed to get a briefing by the director of National Intelligence here in the coming days and hopefully I will learn more. They said that they didn't learn about this until the Trump administration left office. So I think it sounds like they went back and pulled up the historical tapes, if you will, of objects entering the airspace and figured out that maybe indeed this happened. So I hope to learn more in the coming days.

Josh King:

The newest threat, if you believe the reports, might be the massive Chinese manufactured cranes that are over US ports like Long Beach might be gathering intel for our adversary. The Chinese say these concerns are paranoia driven. What say you to that?

Mark Esper:

I don't say that when it comes to China and espionage. Look, they've stolen our intellectual property. They've tried to steal economic data from across our country in multiple sectors. They spy on Americans. They've conducted disinformation operations in our country. They've conducted police operations in our country. I mean, they have a long-term strategic plan to undermine us and to promote themselves as the global leader. And they intend to do that by the year 2049.

And the idea, if you will, of putting some type of sensing devices on cranes or really getting a better understanding of what's moving in and out of our ports is a very clever strategy to understand what's coming in, what's going out, where is it going, what does it mean? Because one day it may enable them to shut down our country during a crisis, through a cyber attack or through something else. So we need to be very conscious of what we're dealing with. And this is a very clever, conspiring, if you will, Chinese Communist Party that has aims that will hurt us in the long run.

Josh King:

I was out at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs yesterday where we train our future F-16 pilots, among all the other leadership roles that we ask our officers to do. Meanwhile, Mark, in Arizona, we've got two Ukrainian pilots being assessed in simulators to fly the F-16 with perhaps another 10 on the way. Let's cut through the PR a little bit. How realistic is it that there's going to be a dozen fully equipped armed, maintained F-16s with fully trained pilots flying sorties in and out of Kyiv to make battle against the Russians?

Mark Esper:

I think it's inevitable. President Biden has said on multiple occasions, "We're going to be with you, Ukraine, as long as you need it." We know that at some point, now, they need fixed wing fighter aircraft to either help or gain control of their skies, or to conduct ground strikes in a counter offensive. So I think it's a matter of time. Four weeks ago, President Biden was saying no, and now we're training or assessing their pilots. And this is not the first time we've seen this.

From the beginning days of the war, we've seen the United States say no, no, no on a certain type of weapon system, then it's maybe, and then it's yes, whether it's HIMARS or Stingers or tanks, we just got to give them, the Ukrainians, what they need when they need it. And they've needed these things for quite some time. That's been my big disappointment here with the Biden administration.

Josh King:

Yeah, so what do you think of the no, no, no and then yes approach, the way you describe it? And then from a practical standpoint, you can train a dozen pilots, but what will it actually take to move a dozen planes and all their associated armaments and support and actually facilitate that kind of action flown by the Ukrainians and not us?

Mark Esper:

Yeah. Well, two things. First on the reasons, I think we've been self-deterred. We've been too concerned about how Putin might react, that we've self-deterred our ourselves from doing what was in the best interests of ourselves, frankly, and Ukraine. In other words, all this does by trickling out these weapon systems in this assistance is extend the war, is to allow it to drag on and result in more death and destruction. So we need to move beyond that. Reaching the point where we will give them almost anything they need. They've been asking now for eight months or so for ATACMS, and we still haven't given them that. And there's no really good explanation for why that hasn't happened. Now look, on the F-16s, I think the Ukrainians likely will be able to train quicker than us because they have a sense of urgency.

Their country's at stake, that's number one. And number two, with regard to the aircraft, we're not the only ones that have aircraft. We have a number of NATO allies that have F-16 aircraft that could be provided. And I even suggested in an op-ed that maybe the Ukraine considers volunteers, former pilots who flew F-16s. Also, maintenance crews that maintained F-16s could fly for Ukraine. This is not unprecedented. If you recall during World War II, we had Eagle Squadrons from the United States who were volunteer pilots who flew for the British during the Battle of Britain. So there are ways to get the Ukrainians what they need far more quickly than what's being discussed right now.

Josh King:

Secretary Austin's last job in uniform was the four-star in charge of CENTCOM, which ended in 2016, meaning that he'd need the same kind of waiver that Jim Mattis needed when he took over the Pentagon in 2017 after retiring as head of CENTCOM in 2013. So Trump would say that both of these guys were out of Central Casting. You took a very different route, as Capt. Weinberger did, which I mentioned in the intro. You don't say a lot about Secretary Mattis in your book. Should we revert to the tradition of secretaries of defense who are fully evolved civilian having left their time in uniform way in the past, because our last two have been cycled very quickly from their command positions?

Mark Esper:

I do think we should stick to what the rules used to be. My boyhood hero was General George Marshall. He was a secretary of defense. He actually believed a retired general should not be called back, but he did so at the urging of Truman, if I recall properly, because what was happening during the Korean War. But I think even he would say it should be a civilian position, that the old rules should be reinstated. There are good reasons why and just I'll leave it that.

Josh King:

In many ways, Mark, you are a defense secretary from Central Casting. I alluded to your bio in the intro, and as I read through the 668 pages of your book, I'm thinking to myself, "A guy with this much readiness for the role had two little time in office compared to Weinberger's seven years, and what he did have was wasted on that commander-in-chief." Over the course of your career, from your time in uniform to your work in the private sector, how much did you model, beyond George Marshall, prior secretaries and how did your theory evolve on what you'd do if you're ever put in charge of the Pentagon? Which it seems as I'm reading your bio, looking at your website, you were sort of conditioning yourself to be ready for, and then you've just got 18 months and a president like Trump.

Mark Esper:

You take leadership lessons and examples from people you admire and respect. You talked about Capt. Weinberger. Interestingly, he was the one who presented me my diploma at West Point in 1986, so I certainly recall him. But there are others like Bob Gates that really made their mark on the Pentagon. So you take those leadership lessons, but as you noted, look, I grew up in the military, if you will. I swore my first oath to the Constitution at age 18 at West Point. So I spent four years at Academy, 10 years active duty in the United States and abroad during wartime and peace. Then I served in the Guard and Reserves, I served in the defense industry on Capitol Hill. So by the time I made it back to the Pentagon in 2017 as secretary of the Army, I had a pretty good understanding of who I was, what I wanted to accomplish, what I needed to do with the service.

And we could talk about how we went about starting a renaissance in the Army, but by the time I make it to secretary of defense, I had a good feel for what I wanted to do. It had been my fifth job in the Pentagon. I knew the building fairly well, and so we had a very good national defense strategy. And I made it my mission, my top priority, to implement that national defense strategy, which said we're now in a great era, now in an era of great power competition with China as our top competitor, followed by Russia. So I really struck out on a number of objectives and goals that I wanted to accomplish during my time, however long or short it would be, to make sure we moved the Pentagon in the direction of being able to deal with the Chinese in the future.

Josh King:

I mean, talking about Central Casting and this preparation that you had, Mark, one of your bosses on Capitol Hill, Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee, literally was from Central Casting, with Kevin Costner in No Way Out, with Clint Eastwood In The Line of Fire, with Paul Newman in Fat Man and Little Boy. Let's listen to him with Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2 and Alec Baldwin in The Hunt For Red October.

Audio:

... have a code red alert. Everyone already on approach or inside our pattern holds at the outer markers. Stack them, pack them and rack them.

The only way to get you onto Dallas is to fly you out there by chopper. The only way we can get you that far north is to strip it down and turn it into a flying gas can.

Josh King:

A flying gas can. Now, Senator Thompson had served as minority council in the Senate Watergate hearings. How did working with him and people like majority leader Bill Frist teach you about dealing with the Washington bureaucracy?

Mark Esper:

Working with them was just some of the best moments of my professional career, and particularly Fred Thompson, because he had that celebrity status wherever we went, and that voice is so recognizable. And as we would travel around, to include on aircraft carriers or other naval facilities, Air Force, you name it, he would get such recognition and it was just a pleasure working for him. He was focused on the right principles. And if you read that part of my book, you'll also know that he was part of a minority, a handful of senators who actually said that we need to be careful about allowing China access to our top technologies, about how we control technologies going to China.

"Because if we're not careful," he once said, or actually he said on a few occasions, "We will give them the rope that they will hang us with." And here we are, 20 some years after we granted China access to the World Trade Organization that we do find ourselves on the other end of his prediction, unfortunately so. But working with him, traveling with him, getting to know him was a great experience. And of course, I served as his national policy director in 2007 and 2008 when he ran for president. So we had a second go at it. I thought he would've done good things for the country if elected, but he never made it that far.

Josh King:

You trained Fort Campbell as a member of the 101st, where you were a rifle platoon leader, a TOW platoon leader, a rifle company XO, and a battalion S-3. This led then to Operation Shenandoah II and the Hail Mary maneuver during the Gulf War. I want to hear from another general from Central Casting, Norm Schwartzkopf, in the mother of all news conferences.

Audio:

I think this is probably one of the most important parts of the entire briefing I could talk about. As you know, very early on, we took out the Iraqi Air Force. We knew that he had very, very limited reconnaissance means, and therefore when we took out his Air Force, for all intents and purposes, we took out his ability to see what we were doing down here in Saudi Arabia.

Once we had taken out his eyes, we did what could best be described as the Hail Mary play in football. I think you recall, when the quarterback is desperate for a touchdown at the very end, what he does is he steps up behind the center and all of a sudden every single one of his receivers goes way out to one flank and they all run down the field as fast as they possibly can and into the end zone, and he lobs the ball. In essence, that's what we did.

Josh King:

What was your role in Hail Mary? And as a young captain leading your infantry on maneuvers in Iraq, how important was it to have a leader like Schwartzkopf having your back on Saudi?

Mark Esper:

He was such a tremendous leader and great communicator, and at the end of the day, what he allowed us to do big-picture was it was that victory in the Gulf War and his presence. And of course, General Colin Powell played a role in President Bush and Secretary Defense Cheney. We really finally shook off the Vietnam syndrome after decades of carrying it with us, both across the country and in the military in particular. So it was a great victory in that sense and it really gave us a great deal of confidence for what would be some challenging decades that we now know would follow. But my role was, I was in the 101st Airborne Division. I was in the lead battalion of 3rd of the 187th Infantry, and we were actually the furthest deployed north into southern Iraq at the time, and our mission was pretty straightforward.

We went in behind enemy lines, if you will. We were situated just south of a major roadway called Highway 8, if I can recall properly. And our job was to make sure no Iraqi forces escape from the south and no Iraqi reinforcements made it in from the north. And we cut that road and defended that piece of train for about a week or so until the war ended. And it was a very memorable moment in my time, a big part of my professional career. Of course, it shaped a lot of how I would see the military years later, as both secretary of the Army and secretary of defense, and very proud of the time I served with the 101st, but more particularly with my comrades in the Gulf War.

Josh King:

President Trump must have had on the brain that memory of Schwartzkopf leading the troops home on that parade that was held in Washington after the Gulf War ended as a impetus for the directive that he tried to give you to have 107 airplanes fly over the National Mall on the Independence Day celebration in 2020. He had also been to France and seen what they had done on one of their celebrations. There were a lot of real lessons that came home from the Gulf War, but to a visualist like Trump, it was how good the parade looked on the Washington Mall.

Mark Esper:

Yeah, context matters, right? We remember the parade. Actually, I don't remember the parade. I think I was still in Saudi Arabia at the time, but it was to celebrate the troops and, again, to celebrate this important moment in American history as well. We had a parade in 2019 that occurred right after I entered office. I think I was still in an acting capacity then. But the issue you referenced is the 2020, I think, proposal, which was proposed to be much bigger and much more robust. And again, context matters. This was at a point when it wasn't about a victory over a vanquished enemy, but it had the feel for some people that it was the military promoting Donald Trump or something like that. And look, I think it's good to celebrate our troops. I think it's good to show them off, if you will, in a way that is... But it has to be done appropriately and tastefully.

So I didn't necessarily have... wasn't opposed to parades per se, but it just depends on how it was done. And as I describe in the book, I thought it was overdone. I thought it was the wrong context, particularly I think that it would've occurred in July, which was after all the domestic unrest in which the National Guard and others were deployed across the streets of America, at a time when the president wanted to use active duty troops against protestors. It really had all the wrong feel at that point in time. So these are the judgements you have to make on the spot at the time and to figure out what's best for the country, what's best for civil military relations between the two, and what's best for how the 99% of Americans who don't serve, how do they look upon and regard that 1% that is sworn to protect and defend them?

Josh King:

I mean, talking about that 1%, many secretaries have taken time after their term in office to capture their memories and provide their perspective on what they did when they were in office. Donald Rumsfeld wrote Known and Unknown. Robert Gates, you mentioned earlier, wrote Worthy Fights. Leon Panetta, who I worked with when I worked in the Clinton administration, wrote his book. Jim Mattis wrote Call Sign Chaos. You wrote in the acknowledgements that A Sacred Oath was your first book. What was the process like? It's a lot of book to put out, pretty short time. And what did you take from your predecessors efforts to chronicle their periods in the top Pentagon job?

Mark Esper:

As you said, I was fired on November 9th and I was reached out to within a few weeks after that to talk about writing a book. It wasn't something I had really seriously considered. But as I had a chance to reflect in the weeks following my departure, and then as things evolved in DC with President Trump challenging the election and so forth, I thought I owe it to the American people, if you will, to understand their history, particularly during this very tumultuous and consequential period, to lay down what happened.

And not just what happened, but what happened from the perspective of a cabinet member who sat in one of the power ministries, if not the power ministry, the defense department. Because DOD also ended up becoming the go-to organization, the go-to institution, better yet, for things he wanted done, whether it was shore up the border, provide border security, go to the military to do that. To deal with protestors, go to the military. To address the pandemic, whether it was taking care of Americans who were sick or coming up with vaccines, go to the military.

So I thought it was very important to talk about this history. And because I knew it would be so controversial, I wanted to be very accurate and fair and as objective as possible, so I knew I needed to be very meticulous. And so I began the process of writing. Took me four months, which is pretty quick. But along the way, what I would do is I would parcel out chapters to, at the end of the day, nearly three dozen, if you will, four star officers, senior civilians, even some cabinet members with the one request being, "Help me get this as accurate, fair, and as objective as possible because it's too important to come out anything less than that."

Josh King:

What throughout your life has been sort of your journaling and note-taking process, and then when you actually sat down for those four months, did you enjoy the process?

Mark Esper:

Well, like anybody else, I had my experiences in undergraduate and graduate school. I have a PhD, so I had to write a dissertation, but nothing like this.

Josh King:

Wrote a dissertation on? I was going to ask you that.

Mark Esper:

Oh, it was on the role of Congress and the development of US strategic weapons in 1950 to 1970, or something like that.

Josh King:

You can do another podcast on that.

Mark Esper:

Yeah, I'm sure you'll get three listeners. In terms of the process, I never wrote a book before, and so I, being trained as an engineer, if you will, I had to think about how do you go about doing this? I wrote down on stickies all the topics that I think needed to be addressed and all the topics that I wanted to address, and then just started laying them out in some type of order, and eventually just began writing. Although I began with some trepidation. And with the guidance from the publisher that said we want 90,000 words or so, I actually ended up writing 250,000 words. So what you see in that book is only 180,000. I had to cut a lot out of it. But I wanted to tell a very broad story. This is not a book about the Trump administration. This is my memoir, about me and my life.

And so there's more that I wanted to tell, and I thought about this in a few ways. I was speaking to a few audiences. First, the American people, at large. Secondly, those people who work in government, whether you're a civilian or a military person, or in government, want to understand how it works or want to understand how a senior cabinet official thinks. I wanted to write it for them. And then of course, I wanted to write it for the folks in uniform because so much of this is about them. Of course, I dedicate the book to them and my family in the process. So those are the three audiences I wrote for.

And then as I thought about how to write it, I wanted to give the reader three perspectives. One, with regard to what was happening at the time. The second about what I was thinking as that was happening. And third, I tried to step back and give a bird's eye view what was going on either across the government, across the country, or around the world at the same time. So I tried to also write it on three different levels. So it sounds complicated, but when you get into the rhythm, it actually starts flowing pretty easily.

Josh King:

Talking about the folks in uniform, Mark, General Mark Milley, the 20th chairman of the joint chiefs of staff was here a couple of months ago as part of a visit to our NYSE Institute. General Milley figures prominently in A Sacred Oath, and given the apolitical role of the chairman and the fact that the job has generally transitioned in an orderly fashion every four years in off-campaign cycle years, it does provide this unique perspective on presidential transitions. What is the philosophy that a soldier like Milley takes because commanders in chief, chiefs of staff, national security advisors are all going to come in with different philosophies?

Mark Esper:

Sure. Well, look, from my perspective, in uniform, I served on active duty for Reagan, Bush and Clinton, and so you kind of roll with the administration. The administration, when you win election, you have a chance to advance your own policies and priorities, and that's the consequences of winning for the side that loses. So as an apolitical military officer, your job is to provide leadership, the best advice you can, your military recommendations, and then otherwise you salute and follow the orders of your elected officials. And that's the professional ethic that military officers abide by.

And that is known very well, which is why I was always confident in the institution that it would do the right thing because there was such a strong professional ethic, a good understanding of the American military's role in society, going back 240 plus years. So I was always confident at the end of the day that the institution would remain strong, resilient, and strong.

Josh King:

Our current national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, is 46 years old. His deputy, Jon Finer, is the same. Lots of years at Yale between them, but none in the military. Perhaps we saw some of that inexperience in the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Let's hear from Jake talking to George Stephanopoulos.

Audio:

That has not satisfied all the president critics. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, "Joe Biden left behind Americans. He left behind vetted Afghan allies who risked their lives for our soldiers. A disgraceful lack of leadership from an incompetent president." Your response?

My response is that leadership means taking a look at the situation and asking the hard question, "What is going to be in the best interest of the United States of America, those American citizens still in Afghanistan and those Afghan allies?" And he got a unanimous recommendation from his secretary of state, his secretary of defense, all of his civilian advisors, all of his commanders on the ground, and all of the joint chiefs of staff, that the best way to protect our forces and the best way to help those Americans was to transition this mission.

Josh King:

Leadership means taking a long look at the situation and asking the hard questions. A Sacred Oath is filled with you asking yourself and others, various moments in the situation room, a lot of hard questions. And you tick off these questions one after another as you're writing. And neither Jake, nor Robert O'Brien had served in uniform. In the novel 2034, Admiral Jim Stavridis, who's been on this show before, casts the national security advisor as the villain. Mark, is it an impossible job? I mean, based on some of your observations about Robert O'Brien, the self-styled navalist that he was, should there be prerequisites to the job?

Mark Esper:

I don't think serving in uniform is required for either the national security advisor or the secretary of defense. I think it helps. I think in some ways, if you serve too long, if you make a career out of the military, it could actually be limiting in some ways, depending on the individual. I think what's important is that you have people who are willing to take in a number of views and can process that and really come up with the best options for the president. And my view of the national security advisor, and I talk about it in my book, is not to be an advocate for any one idea, but really to be the person that tease up a variety of options for the president and presents them and presents them all wholeheartedly, if you will, in terms of their pluses and minuses, pros and cons and what it may mean, and then coordinate that policy.

That's the role of the national security advisor, in my mind, and I've seen it demonstrated in a number of folks in the past. So again, I don't think it's disqualifying. I think it can be helpful. But I think the key is having somebody that can work with all the different players and really represent their positions well and help give the president as many options as possible.

Josh King:

I mean, yeah, guys like Sandy Berger and Tom Donilon, people that I worked with in my different periods in DC were more like lawyers trying to traffic good information to the president, not people advocating a specific strategy or policy.

Mark Esper:

Right, exactly. I mean, I think you actually do the president a disservice when he's not hearing all the views and are not being fairly represented. And that was often my complaint, as I talk about in the book.

Josh King:

So speaking of real navalists, we had the current Navy secretary, Carlos Del Toro, and also the former CNO, Admiral John Richardson, who I worked with back in the nineties on the show. Here's Admiral Richardson talking with me on this broadcast a couple years ago.

Audio:

A few weeks ago, the sea trials of China's first domestically constructed aircraft carrier have sparked this fresh debate or talk discussion about Chinese naval power. Much of the focus on the Sino-US relationship has been about China and President Trump's, about trade and President Trump's relationship with the President Xi, and yet we know about China's ambitions in the South China Sea.

Well, about 33% of the world's trade goes through the South China Sea. That was a very important body of water. And we have been, the United States Navy has been in the South China Sea pretty much consistently, same force levels, consistent posture for seven decades. And our business there is to advocate for free and open rules-based behavior on the seas.

Josh King:

Rules-based behavior on the seas. Can we depend it on the future?

Mark Esper:

Well, I think that's what we're trying to defend right now is what we call the International Rules-Based Order that begins with free and open Indo-Pacific when it comes to China. And what we see are the Chinese threatening that in any number of ways. They want to constrict the free passage of ships in the Taiwan Strait. They're claiming territorial waters all across the South China Sea with their so-called nine-dash line. They're using a maritime militia to bully around other countries' navies and other countries' fishing vessels.

This is the heart of the issue that we have with the Chinese Communist Party, is they want to upend that international rules-based order. They want to dominate the global order and rearrange it in their vision of what it should look like. And look, if you don't like your freedom, if you don't like personal rights and liberties, if you don't like free speech, if you don't like human rights, then that's for you, but that's not for me. And that's why I think it's so important that we defend it and be prepared to defend it when that time comes.

Josh King:

Speaking of our own aircraft carriers, the USS Gerald Ford has been an ongoing saga, you had self-styled navalist as commander-in-chief. President Trump asked you directly about moving the island on the Ford to the middle of the ship to improve its look. He also preferred steamed the new electromagnetic catapults on the Ford. He thought that the Russians and Italians built a better looking warship than us. Should the president be involved in ship building?

Mark Esper:

I don't think so. I think what presidents should ask of their secretary of defense is, do we have the military we need to affect the foreign policy goals or strategic aims that he wants? To me, that's the fundamental question he should ask. And then, of course, related to that is are we ready? Because you always want to make sure that you have a ready force for the president, in case something happens and the United States needs to respond or we need to act in one way, shape, or form. Now that said, presidents throughout history take unique interests in individual things. I guess for President Trump, it was the look of our ships.

Josh King:

Also, delivery of new Air Force One.

Mark Esper:

Those things, right, they have particular interests. I thought it went too far. I thought it was a waste of time. I say to the president, "Look, the US Navy values function over form," and tried to talk to him about those things. On the other hand, he was right. The Ford had run $14 billion. It was long over budget, long over schedule. That should not be tolerated. So he was spot on with regard to that ship. And it's a metaphor, if you will, for our ship building anyways, which we're not where we need to be, particularly if we're going to deal with the Chinese Navy in the years ahead.

Josh King:

Despite his dramatics, there's so much that's asked backward in procurement, whether it's buying more Ford class carriers, or as you suggested with Battle Force 2045, veering toward more light conventional carriers and unmanned surface and subsurface vessels. Mark, then what is the right mix? You have a photo in your book of you in Norfolk on the USS Boise, a fast attack sub that hasn't deployed in four years due to a maintenance backlog. How can we get our ship building and maintenance infrastructure that meets our needs?

Mark Esper:

Well, that was the plan we put forward in Battle Force 2045 in the fall of 2020. It was an objective force. In other words, this is where we'd want to be by the year 2045 because we knew the Chinese ambition was to upend the global order by the year 2049, and so it was set along those terms. You can't just snap your fingers and build a fleet. It happens over decades because you have the current fleet in place and it takes time for them to move out. At the same time, you have to reconfigure to build that future fleet. So look, what it needs is a strong leadership from the Navy, the clear aim of what they want to build, how much of that they want to build, and along what timeline. And then a solid, predictable demand signal to industry, which is backed up by a dollars appropriated by Congress so that industry can build the yards, they can acquire the tooling, the components, they can hire the workers to build the ships we need for the future.

So my argument was we should be building more submarines, attack submarines, which are lethal and survivable and give us a lot of features, and build fewer large class aircraft carriers and maybe convert some of those to, like you said, lighter carriers. So we're just not there yet. We seem to continue to fall behind in terms of ship building. And what we really need to do is to get that right because we have the greatest Navy in the world, hands down, but we need to make sure that they are configured and prepared for what China has in mind in the years ahead. And we know now, I mean it's China now has the largest Navy in the world, maybe not the most capable, but they do have the largest Navy in the world. We have to get ourselves organized and make sure we're on target to again re-engineer our Navy to meet that threat.

Josh King:

The Pentagon wanted to retire eight of the 10 freedom class littoral combat ships that are now based in Jacksonville and another one in San Diego, even though they averaged only four years of lifespan so far and had been built to last for 25. Then the lobbying started to get Congress to say no. Eight of the top defense contractors listed here at the New York Stock Exchange. How can we fix this to build a fleet to counter the Chinese threat?

Mark Esper:

Yeah, look, I talk about this in my book and it goes back to the earliest days of the Republic, when we first had a Navy and ship building was important to congressional districts and to the people who built ships, and it really hasn't changed in 240 years. So look, the LCS probably shouldn't have been built in the first place. And now the Navy, I suspect is not knowing a way forward, needing to save money, is trying to let go of the ones that aren't working to free up funds to do some other things. But what they need to do is build that coalition on Capitol Hill. This really requires strong leadership. I think the secretary of defense needs to get involved, I got involved on this because I thought it was so important, and really take this issue on once and for all and lay out what is the Navy we want to have.

Get agreement. Don't change it every year, every other year. And then get a commitment from those critical members on Capitol Hill that this is the Navy we'll build. And it's going to mean retiring ships. Not just ones that are no longer suited for the fight, but ones that are too old or that are too costly to maintain. I mean, the maintenance bill alone on the current fleet is pretty hefty. And that's another thing dragging down the Navy. There are a number of factors, I talk about them in my memoir, that are complicating this puzzle, but it's really, really important that we get this right.

Josh King:

After the break, Mark Esper and I continue our conversation about A Sacred Oath, his term as the secretary of defense, and the emerging threats facing future secretaries, future commanders in chief, and the nation as a whole. That's all coming up right after this.

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Josh King:

Welcome back. Before the break, I was talking to Dr. Mark T. Esper about breaking news in the national security arena, his career and his book, A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times. I'm going to continue with a quick tour around the world, it's trouble spots, and how our military interacts with them. So let's begin with the way it begins for all officers across the now six branches of our military, including the Space Force, which is established during your tenure with the signing of the National Defense Authorization Act. I mentioned Jimmy Carter in the intro. He took his oath as an ensign in 1946. You took yours 40 years later as a second lieutenant in the Army. They're exactly the same. What's the oath, what does it mean?

Mark Esper:

Well, the oath is raising your right hand and swearing to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It really outlines what makes America unique. The fact that we swear an oath to a document, if you will, that embodies the core principles of our republic. It talks about our freedoms and our democracy and how it's organized and the rights of its people. And unlike many, many other countries, we don't swear oaths to kings or queens, to dictators, to parties, if you will. We swear to this constitution that embodies our republic and our values.

And so it's unique and we appreciate that. I took that as an officer, that first oath, but really at age 18, I took it when I entered West Point as a brand new cadet and then took it multiple times afterwards. So it was something that is very personal, means a lot to me. I've only taken two oaths like that in my life. One is to the Constitution is and the second was my vows of marriage to my wife, and so I tend to take these things seriously.

Josh King:

So Mark, maybe our tour should begin in low Earth orbit because the oath applies as well to the Space Force. An oath taker swears to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But when it was prescribed in section 3331 of Title V of the US Code, it didn't envision an enemy outside the stratosphere. What was the rationale for adding the sixth branch to our armed forces, not something the Navy or Air Force could do?

Mark Esper:

Well, I thought it was important. I felt privileged to stand up the Space Force and Space Command as well. I think it was an important evolution in our own national security and the development of our armed forces. At the time, I thought it was akin to the establishment of the Air Force in 1947 out of the Army. And it was important back then because the Air Force was subject to the ground branch. And the ground branch was dominated, of course, by officers and leaders who saw things through the lens of how do land forces conduct war?

That encapsulate, of course, by extension, doctrine and tactics and everything else. But it wasn't until the Air Force became its own branch that was allowed to develop its own doctrine, its own ways of operating, its own technologies to fulfill their mission and their own culture. And now we have the greatest Air Force in the world as a result. In my mind, that is why it was important to call out the Space Force to establish it as its own entity, to allow it to do those same type of things and to give it that focus. And so far, the results have been very promising and very good, and I'm quite proud of how far the Space Force has come along now in three plus years

Josh King:

Will it take 70 years though for this Space Force to get to where the Air Force is and with its own culture and its own creativity and innovation?

Mark Esper:

Well, the United States Air Force, I would argue, became the greatest air force in the world just after its birth. And so, I think right now the Space Force is the greatest space force in the world just after its birth. But clearly those other parts of it will need to be developed over time. How does it train, organize and equip? How does it develop its own acquisition, capabilities, its own research and development? Those things will come along. But look, it's the best out there and they're doing wonderful things. And not just with themselves, but with allies as well, allies and partners around the world.

Josh King:

The oath also applies as well in San Diego, home to members of our special warfare community. You spend a lot of time in A Sacred Oath talking about the case of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman in Washington and the case of Captain Brett Crozier at our base in Guam during COVID, but comparatively little on the case of Chief Eddie Gallagher and his performance in the battle for Mosul in Iraq. Here's a piece for NBC news on his acquittal.

Audio:

Tonight, vindication for a Navy SEAL.

Tears of joy.

Absolute joy.

Emotion, freedom, absolute euphoria.

The jury Acquitting Chief Edward Gallagher of six of the seven charges against him, including premeditated murder.

Huge victory.

Josh King:

"Huge victory," he says, Mark. The case led to your dismissal of your friend, Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, who worked here at ICE as CFO earlier in his career. How difficult was it for you to work within the vortex of the White House and the close-knit special warfare community? And are the SEALs and our spec ops teams on a better path now in the principle of good order and discipline?

Mark Esper:

It unfolded for several months and I almost, I had him walked back until some things happened involving Richard Spencer and others that blew it back open and eventually Eddie Gallagher walked free. It's part of the history now. At the point in time, I thought there was too much drama going on around this. And as I write in the book, at the end of the day, I did not want to get involved in service matters, nor did I think the president should be involved in these types of matters.

But when the issue came up again about should or should not Eddie be allowed to wear his Trident pin, and we were somehow going to leave this to a board of non-commissioned officers to handle, I finally stepped in and said, "Enough is enough. We have to stop this drama. We need the Navy, and particularly the special warfare community, focused on doing its job and not these matters." So I stepped in, kind of resolved that final issue and wanted to get the Navy, the service focused back on its mission from there forward.

Josh King:

We have issues of the way the SEALs conduct their operations, and we do have, as part of the oath, as part of good order and discipline, what you'd expect of officers and our enlisted soldiers. Where do you think the special warfare community is now?

Mark Esper:

Well, I didn't go through BUD/S. I went through Ranger and Airborne and Pathfinder and all those schools on the Army side of the ledger. But I had this discussion on a few occasions with General Richard Clark, who is the commander of Special Operations Command about how do you get the culture right in special operations communities, particularly when they're sent out on missions. It's a small group of mostly men, of men in the SEALs that are expected to do courageous and bold things under very trying circumstances, and how do you expect them to behave in that regard? And we found that those teams, their bonds are extremely close. The camaraderie, the level is very high. So much so that in some cases they would overlook misbehavior by members of their team.

And that was the culture problem, or at least one of the problems we had to fix, is how do you instill that sense of culture and a professional ethos that draws a line between right and wrong, between what's a war crime and what's not, between what they should do and shouldn't do, and the big role that is the officers in those units? So those are all things that General Rich Clark was working to fix. I was working with him on it, and it's something we need to continue to work on. Because look, I think what's special about the United States military, and there are a number of things, one of which we always raise, is the role of the non-commissioned officers in our ranks that are very special and really are a secret sauce, if you will, as to why we're so successful.

But part of it too is, look, we follow the laws of land warfare. We have a professional ethic. We know right from wrong. We know at the end of the day that we will strive to do the right thing and when we don't, people will be held accountable, even in wartime. That's what we talked about a lot and that's what was ingrained to me at West Point, and certainly in the Army. That's why in January of 2020, if you recall, I mentioned it briefly in the book, the president came out and talked about United States military bombing Iranian cultural and historic sites, and I had to come out right behind him and say, "No, we're not going to do that. We're going to follow the laws of land warfare." Because I thought it important to send that message from me, the civilian leader of DOD, that there was no change in our professional ethic, in our obeyance, if you will, of international law, the laws of land warfare.

Josh King:

Taking a quick trip around the Arctic Circle, landing us somewhere around Kyiv or the outskirts of Kyiv across Ukraine. We are now just over a year into Russia's invasion. Estimates are that Russia has killed or wounded 200,000 of their soldiers. What have we learned about their capabilities or lack thereof?

Mark Esper:

Yeah, it's a great question. Most folks thought that at the beginning of the war on February 24th, 2022, that Russia would seize Kyiv in a matter of days, take over the country within a week or so and replace leadership, and it would become another domain of Russia. And that didn't happen. I think we overestimated Russian capabilities, capabilities of the individual soldier, of their NCOs, of their officers, of their equipment, of their technologies, of their tactics and so on. We overestimated all of that and then we underestimated the Ukrainians, particularly their will to fight and their innovation on the battlefield.

You can see what happens when a small, brave, determined force wants to win and is defend their country, what they can do against a much larger and more capable foe. And I think it's been an important lesson for all of us, and I hope it's an important lesson for Beijing and Taiwan because the lesson learned from Taiwan, and I was there last summer speaking to their leadership, speaking to President Tsai, and that is if you can adopt the right strategy, if you can acquire the right weapons, if you can train your military, your people to fight, you can deter a Chinese invasion of your country, of Taiwan. And that's important.

Josh King:

I want to get to President Tsai in a minute. Let's pause though a little bit. In Europe, you grew up, as you write in your book, in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, founded July 4th, 1776, where, as you mentioned earlier, George C. Marshall had come from and born and raised. Here is Secretary of State Marshall testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, selling his plan to rebuild Europe.

Audio:

Secretary of State George C. Marshall in an extemporaneous extension of his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee underlines the need for full cooperation with communist menaced countries seeking aid from America under the European Relief Program.

I think it is of the greatest importance, that in considering this program, the people as well as the Congress thoroughly understand the critical world situation. We've had to comment several times that we won a victory, but we still have not won a peace.

Josh King:

Won a victory, but still not have won a peace. Mark, what kind of inspiration was Marshall for you as you found yourself across the table from NATO's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Kay Bailey Hutchinson negotiating President Trump's order to remove US forces from Germany?

Mark Esper:

George Marshall, which was such an extraordinary man and officer, and I think for many of us in the military, he defined what it means to be a professional military officer serving in an apolitical mode for your country. He, in many ways, suppressed his own ambitions to serve President Roosevelt during World War II. He was there by his side. He was considered the architect of victory. Again, he just demonstrated the core professional ethic. I had photos of him above my wall in both my secretary of the army office and secretary of defense office, as did many throughout the Pentagon. He is probably one of the most, if not the most revered officers in the Department of Defense. He set a very high bar for me and many others. I studied him in some detail and learned a lot from him. But to your question about the President Trump's desire to withdraw US forces from Germany, you kind of have to go back a little bit, right?

It grew out of the president's frustration with Germany not canceling the Nord Stream II project, with Germany not meeting its obligations to spend a sufficient amount of GDP on his defense. And President Trump was exactly right on both those points, by the way. This has been proven out to this date. And he wasn't the first president to say that Germany should be spending more on defense. As a result, he said we should pour our forces out of Germany. His intent was to bring them home to the United States. I thought a lot of his messaging was harmful to the alliance, that it undermined NATO, certainly the confidence of our allies and our ability or our willingness to live up to our Article V commitments. I'm sure those words pleased Vladimir Putin. And I thought that the withdrawal of American forces would incent them in some ways, the Russians to misbehave, again, would undermine the alliance.

I was very concerned about the harm it would do to the nation's security. So what I said to the commander at the time, General Walters was, "Give me a plan of how you would do that. I don't want to see bringing them back to the United States, but how would you redeploy them throughout Europe?" And I said, "You had to meet these five principles," and I outlined them in a book. It's maintain deterrents, reassure our allies, maintain our capability, so forth and so on. I said, "If you can meet those five principles, then we may be able to work with this." If not, then I knew I would have to have a reckoning with myself, with the president about what this means to our nation's security, as it affected the alliance. But Walters came back, had a very good plan where he would bring units back together.

We would consolidate some units in Italy and elsewhere. But importantly, the plan was to move more combat units further east into Romania, Bulgaria. I wanted to move forces into Poland and the Baltics as well, and to really show greater deterrence toward Russia and to really support the alliance in a way that would still meet president's goal of getting 10,000 troops out of Germany. So we took this plan into the president, briefed him. I was very upfront about that last part as well, and he signed off on it. Now, it didn't play that well in the press. People tend to look at it the other way, but I actually thought it was a good plan going forward.

When the new administration came in, they undid the plan, and yet here we are two years, three years later, and what do we have? We have US forces in Romania, more in Poland, and more in the Baltics. And I think what it says that despite the tough problem we were handed by the White House, we were still able to meet President Trump's intent, but yet do so in a way that actually bolstered our military capabilities on the ground in Europe and really support the ally. So history will write the rest of that story, if you will.

Josh King:

Right. I mean, talked about not meeting obligations as we pivot to Asia as this administration has committed itself to doing. We recently had the Prime Minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida, here at the exchange, talking about his strategy to strengthen his country's economy. You write that Japan pays about 38% of the cost of keeping US forces there, while Korea pays about 30% of the cost of keeping its 28,500 US troops on the peninsula. Korea's investment in defense is about 2.7% of their GDP, while Japan's is no more than 1%. Its minister of defense, Taro Kono, who you write that you had a good relationship with, has moved on to a new role as minister of digital affairs, replaced by Nobuo Kishi. How do we make countries like Japan pay their fair share?

Mark Esper:

Look, I think the Prime Minister Kishi has done a really good job on this. He's been very bold in terms of recognizing the strategic situation Japan now faces vis-a-vis China. He has redefined, if you will, the Constitution of Japan and what it means. He is looking to put offensive missile capabilities in Japan. And he's said that he will double Japan's defense budget to 2% over the next five years. I think those are very important strategic moves. I think that's exactly what we need to see from our allies and partners. My view was that everybody should meet at least 2%, but that should be the floor. So I was glad to see Korea was doing well in that regard, but I thought Japan, particularly Japan being so technologically advanced, being the third-largest economy of the world, given its geostrategic location in Asia, if they would do what they're now doing, it would be a very big and important counterweight partnered with us against China's ambition.

So I was very glad to see that. Now, if you go back to Europe, we have 30 NATO allies right now. Still less than 10 are meeting their 2% GDP requirement. It's quite disappointing. And look, United States should lead NATO, we do lead NATO, but that doesn't mean everybody else can take a free ride. And so I think what we need going forward is to really assert that 2% will be the floor. There's talk about that, by the way, of a NATO summit coming up in Vilnius, Lithuania in July, that we really get allies to meet those commitments. Everybody wants to pay for everything else but defense, but we can't carry the world's water on all this.

Josh King:

I mean, President Trump was willing to say that stuff. And is this administration willing to... Does it even have that gravitas to say that and to force it?

Mark Esper:

Well, we need to force it. We need to talk about it. And we need to do so in a way that will get the public space in these countries behind it. In the case of Germany, there were a lot of words spoken, but we've yet to see action. And there can be no better example I can think of right now than Russia's illegal, unwarranted invasion of Ukraine and the tens of thousands of Ukrainians they've killed to demonstrate that we need to have strong defenses, that strong defenses will deter things like that, that are happening at the hand of Russia, and hopefully not, but maybe one day by China. So deterrence matters. Nobody likes spending money on defense, but it's the insurance policy you have to take out if you want to remain free and enjoy your liberties and personal rights.

Josh King:

Chapter 19 of A Sacred Oath is, as we've been alluding to throughout our conversation, China, China, China. It could cover our whole conversation, Mark. You write about your annual senior leader conference that you held in 2019. The top 10 objectives you agreed on with all your senior leaders all touched on China in some way, shape, or form. This week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he'll meet with Taiwan president Tsai when she visits the US, but no news on whether he's going to follow the visit to Taipei last August, by then speaker, Pelosi. What are the puts and takes of a military confrontation happening sometime in the future in the South China Sea or the Taiwan Straits?

Mark Esper:

Well, we do know that China is building a military to confront the United States at some point in time. We know that Xi Jinping, the leader of the country, has told his military to be ready to possibly conduct an amphibious assault of Taiwan by the year 2027. We know by the year 2035, they want to completely modernize their military. So what that is going to require from us is commitment. Commitment to modernize the force, to innovate with new technologies. I'm doing a lot of work on this right now with a think tank, the Atlantic Council. And to do all those things, we need to make sure we can maintain overmatch with regard to the Chinese, because if we can deter a Chinese assault, then we can hopefully avoid a conflict that nobody wants. And to me, that's critical, going forward.

Josh King:

We talked earlier about how my old friend Tony Blinken canceled his meeting in Beijing after the Chinese surveillance balloon issue. When the balloon was shot down, China's defense ministry said its defense minister, Wei Fenghe, refused the call from Secretary Austin because the US had "not created the proper atmosphere for dialogue and exchange." You write about your own meeting with Mr. Wei at the Asian Conference in 2019. You wrote, "The important thing was that Wei and I knew each other. We also knew how to get ahold of one another quickly, and we had enough of a relationship and mutual respect to discuss difficult matters." How has the relationship eroded to the point that Wei won't take Austin's call?

Mark Esper:

Yeah, it's very troubling that he won't. You're right. I did make it a priority to meet with or talk with my counterpart every three or four months or so because I wanted to make sure that I had a relationship or enough of a relationship that during tough times or ambiguous times, that I could reach out, talk to him and either tell him what's going on on our side or ask him the tough questions about what's happening on his side. So I think those lines of communication are vitally important. I don't know why he wouldn't take Austin's call. On the other hand, I don't know why we would call them.

I think the burden was on them to call us and to explain why they had a spy balloon floitering over our country for a week or so and apologize as well. This is part of the game that China plays, so I don't know what's going on. I think we need to have lines of communication, but we also can't pursue them to the point that looks like we're begging for the relationship. There's this power politics involved in this, and so we got to be patient and we got to make sure we handle China the right way. Look, the Chinese Communist Party only respects power and resolve, and we got to be careful that in our outreach we're not showing some type of weakness.

Josh King:

Talking about the Chinese Communist Party. When President Nixon visited China 51 years ago, here was part of his toast to Premier Zhou Enlai and the people of China.

Audio:

In the spirit of frankness, which I hope will characterize our talks this week, let us recognize at the outset these points. We have at times in the past been enemies. We have great differences today. What brings us together is that we have common interests, which transcend those differences. As we discuss our differences, neither of us will compromise our principles. But while we cannot close the gulf between us, we can try to bridge it so that we may be able to talk across it.

Josh King:

You talk in your book about how we don't want China as an enemy. How can we talk across that bridge once again?

Mark Esper:

I think Nixon's words were very candid and spot on in terms of what he was saying. If you look at the agreement eventually worked out with the Chinese, and that was followed by the Taiwan Relations Act, and then communiques it followed that now represent the scaffolding, if you will, of the diplomatic relationship between the United States and China. We, I believe, have largely lived up to that. It's the Chinese that seek to redefine that relationship, to redefine the words written in those communiques in a way that favors them. And in his remarks, Nixon talked about our common interests. I got to tell you, it's hard to see what the common interests are between the United States and China right now. We often speak about a common interest being climate change, and yet we see no movement by Beijing to address any of its climate goals. In fact, a recent report said that China is no longer building coal-fired power plants one per every 10 days.

They're now building them one every five days. China's going in the opposite direction. They don't share our goals. They want as much power as they can in whatever way they can get it to develop their country. So that's number one. Number two, we talk about do we have a common interest in denuclearizing North Korea? We thought that for years, but yet we've seen no movement by China to help us deal with Pyongyang to help us denuclearize North Korea. And so, I can't think of any other common interests that are out there. I wish there were because it would be nice to build upon them, but I just think our countries have two very different sets of aims, and they are pursuing theirs and we are pursuing ours. But I do think it's important that we work for the best by prepare for the worst.

Josh King:

One of your toughest days as secretary came on June 1st, 2020, which you write about in chapter 13. A Walk In The Park was the name of that chapter. You write, and I'm going to quote you here, "Ivanka was looking at a few Bibles sitting on a table, something I had never seen before in the Oval Office, and eventually grabbed one." Let's hear how that played out. Here's Kayla Tausche of CNBC.

Audio:

Andrew, we want to update you on a surprise visit that the president made, just after those primetime remarks in the Rose Garden last hour. Following his comment that he would be visiting a sacred place, he left the White House and walked with his attorney general, his chief of staff, the secretary of defense, his press team, his daughter and his son-in-law across Lafayette Park, the area of the nation's Capitol that had just moments before that been cleared with tear gas and rubber pellets where peaceful protestors had been.

Josh King:

Mark, you described the press pool being moved into position in front of the group, walking with President Trump. It's a move that I managed a bunch of times when I worked at the White House. The next day on the front page of the New York Times, photographer Doug Mills, one of their best photographers, has you and Chairman Milley and the rest of this group pictured all in black and white. How did you and General Milley react to that?

Mark Esper:

Yeah, look, it was a mistake by both of us, and we both regretted it. But you talk about the opening part. We go over to meet the president after his speech on that Monday. All we were told was that we're going to go to the church and check out the damage. And as we approach him, I say, "Mr. President, where are we..." He says something like, "Are you ready?" And I say, "Well, where are we going?" and he doesn't even answer. He just turns and starts walking. And as we leave the north portico, walk down that, I think it's a gravel road, if you will, still not knowing exactly what we're doing, Milley and I kind of whisper each other, "Let's go find the troops. Let's go talk to the troops, see how they're doing." Because we knew it was going to be a tough night ahead, and we wanted to check on how people were doing, were they prepared, equipped, et cetera.

And it's not until we round the gate there, when you see the throng of reporters, when we know, "Uh oh," this is a political photo op, stunt, if you will. And I say something to Milley like, "We've been duped." And he says, "Yes." At that point, we're stuck. You can't just leave the parade, if you will. And so we follow the president up there and eventually try and sink back into the audience, but it was not the place to be. I'm a political appointee, leading an apolitical organization. I tried as best I could to remain apolitical. I was usually successful. This was not one of those times that I was, and it was really tough for General Milley as well to be there because he's not a political appointee and he was there in his battle fatigues. But he was dressed that way because we had had plans early in the day-

Josh King:

Planning to spend an all-nighter-

Mark Esper:

Both of us.

Josh King:

... walking around Washington.

Mark Esper:

Yeah, both of us. We got called back from either being at the FBI headquarters, the command post, or en route to be there for something we didn't know it was taking place. So it was a low moment for both of us. We had a long talk that night about it, and we knew at that point in time the game had changed. We had to have better political antenna and that we needed to draw our own red lines, if you will. And that's where we came up with the four nos that would guide us throughout the remaining what, six, seven, eight months of the administration. And it dealt with protecting the institution, the country, the military, if you will, from any type of political shenanigans.

Josh King:

Talking about low moments, Mark, as you write often in A Sacred Oath, including in the final chapter, Endgame, you often expected the call nearly every time the phone rang. That meant that every day you thought it might be your last to do what you needed to do to implement the national defense strategy and your other initiatives. When the call finally did come from Mark Meadows, followed by the tweet from President Trump, how did you handle it and how did you assess what you were able to accomplish?

Mark Esper:

So you have to go back first to June when the park incident and other things happened. At that point in time, I knew that I set forth the four nos that I would do, and then I had to come up with a strategy. So my game plan was to play offense, if you will, inside the building, do everything I can every single day to advance our nation's security with a particular focus on China and the national defense strategy. And then outside of the Pentagon, play defense. That was the four nos. Make sure we didn't cross any red lines and break the trust with the American people, so forth and so on. And then I had to figure out, well, what's my end goal? At the time, I figured if I can just make it to the election, just get the institution, get us to the election, and then let the American people decide who they want to lead the next four years, that's what democracy is about.

And so that became my strategy, my goals, and my timeline. So every day I would come into the office and say to my chief of staff, "What do we need to do today in case I get fired tomorrow?" And so, the day after the election, surprisingly found myself still there and in some ways didn't know what to do because we had accomplished so much in terms of advancing the national defense strategy. But you're right. On November 9th, the call comes over the lunch period and Mark Meadows calls me up and says something along the lines, "Mr. Secretary, the president's not happy with you. You haven't been sufficiently loyal. You're being replaced by Christopher Miller immediately." Something like that. Now, I talk about it in my book more accurately. And my response was along the lines of, "That's his prerogative, but my oath is to the Constitution, not to him." And so with that, we both hung up the phone and I left the building an hour or two later.

Josh King:

I mean, in the acknowledgements, you talk about the support that you've got from Leah throughout your marriage. And in some ways that's kind of a metaphor for military families all over the world, that the people in uniform have tough assignments. Sometimes it brings them away from home for long period of times. Sometimes it makes them do stuff that it's very hard to do. But as long as you've got family to lean back on, you'll be all right. And that seems to be the case with you when you got that call.

Mark Esper:

Yeah, the military is a family business. The families, the spouses and children endure the travails of military life as much as, if not more than, their military spouses and fathers or mothers. So Leah was an army spouse. She had been with me through war, through our time together in Europe, through my time in command, and through my many years in the Guard and Reserve. She was great helping me when I returned to the Army as secretary of the Army, taking care of spouse issues, from employment to maternity care, you name it. But she was a great sounding board for me on a daily basis about what I should do, what I shouldn't do.

And she in some ways captures the most famous line or a favorite line by many people who talk to me about a book where, when I talk to her about what should I do, should I resign or should I keep going, and I would talk to everybody, my predecessors from both parties, Colin Powell. And to a person they would say, "Stay, stay to the end. You can't give up now." And then I would go to her and she famously said, "As your wife, I want you to quit, but as an American citizen, please stay." And it becomes this kind of famous line from her about what I wrestled with and her thoughts as both a citizen and as my wife.

Josh King:

As an American citizen, please stay. Mark, as we wrap up, tell us just a bit about your work with Red Cell Partners, building these rapidly scalable technology-led companies that are bringing revolutionary advancements to market in healthcare and national security.

Mark Esper:

Yeah, it's a great question because it's almost an extension of what I did as secretary of defense. I've told you now over the last hour or so that my top priority was implementing a national defense strategy to make sure that we were prepared to meet the Chinese threat in the future. My view was technology was going to be the game changer, and yet, despite all my work, despite standing up Army Futures Command in the Army, DOD is still not at the point where it can quickly adopt innovative technologies at the speed of relevance, at a speed that will beat the Chinese to the punch, particularly in technologies like AI and robotics and quantum and that.

So as I left the Pentagon and started thinking about what to do next, the question is, "Well, where can I make a living, do something fun and exciting, but really continue to make a difference, particularly for our war fighters?" And so dedicating myself and putting my energies behind these young startups, entrepreneurs with these brilliant ideas and a lot of energy and optimism, and helping them develop that technology to navigate DOD and hopefully put that cutting edge technology in the hands of a war fighter sooner rather than later, became an objective of mine. So Red Cell Partners is a great new firm. We're focused on both healthcare and defense. We already have our own companies up and running, and we're going to be doing exciting things as we deploy our capital.

But it's a lot of fun to really meet these entrepreneurs and then help them with that leg up. An important part of what Red Cell does is incubation. We'll bring a startup in, a founder, and we'll wrap our arms around them. We'll provide the HR, the admin, the legal side, the marketing, but we'll also give them the benefit of experienced Pentagon leaders or healthcare leaders or people like myself to counsel and guide them or give them ideas on how to navigate the Pentagon or international sales, you name it, to again, make sure we can get that technology in the hands of the war fighter sooner rather than later.

Josh King:

Talking about our war fighters, Mark, the US Military's Academy's Modern War Institute, which you chair, studies recent and ongoing conflicts to prepare present and future leaders to win in a complex world. Every year at West Point and Annapolis, the Air Force Academy, Coast Guard Academy, we met about 4,000 new officers to defend our national interests in the decades ahead. How are these institutions managing this mission, and how confident are you in their success as you were back in 1986?

Mark Esper:

The academies are doing a great job, and first and foremost, what they're doing is grooming future leaders and instilling in them the values that they will need going forward, the character. For me, it was duty and honor and country. And so first and foremost is developing that character and those leadership traits are vitally important. But they're also aware that as future leaders, they're going to fight future fights with modern technology. So at West Point and the other academies, they are immersed in what this future tech may look like and how it should look and how it would be employed on the modern battlefield.

And then I'd say beyond the academies, because they really provide a small fraction of our officer leadership that enters the services each year, you have a lot of great ROTC programs out there that are doing the same thing. So I'm really pleased and confident and proud of the young people who are in this day and age, raising the right hand and swearing that oath to the Constitution and deciding to serve their country in uniform. I'm very proud of them, and have a lot of respect and admiration for them.

Josh King:

Swearing that oath, serving their country. Mark, it's been a great tour of force, tour of the world. Thank you so much for joining us inside the ICE house.

Mark Esper:

Thank you. It's great to be here.

Josh King:

That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Dr. Mark T. Esper, author of A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense in Extraordinary Times, and chair of the Modern War Institute at the United States Military Academy. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or a question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @icehousepodcast. Our show is produced by Pete Ash. I'm Josh King, your host, signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.

Speaker 1:

Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of the information, and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.

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