Day: November 6, 2020

Defense Secretary Mark Esper has prepared a letter of resignation, according to three current defense officials. Defense officials say Esper prepared his letter because he is one of the Cabinet officials long expected to be pushed out after the election.

• 11-10, Trump announced on Twitter Monday that he has fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and that Christopher Miller, who serves as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, will become acting secretary “effective immediately.”

• 10-27, Esper and Pompeo sought to play on Indian suspicions about China to shore up a regional front against increasing Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region. They also lauded joint cooperation in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. In talks with their Indian counterparts, Esper and Pompeo signed an agreement expanding military satellite information sharing and highlighted strategic cooperation between Washington and New Delhi with an eye toward countering China. The two men paid tribute to Indian troops killed in defense of their country, including 20 who died earlier this year in an incident with China.

• 10-21, Esper said the Pentagon would systematically monitor and manage its relationships with partner countries, aiming to find ways to coordinate militaries and also to advance US arms sales. The initiative, called the Guidance for Development for Alliances and Partnerships(GDAP), came just two weeks before the presidential election that, if President Donald Trump loses, could see Esper replaced in January. It also came after nearly four years of Trump’s efforts to restructure and even dismantle alliances, including threatening NATO.

• 10-16, Speaking at a webinar organised by a think-tank Heritage Foundation on Thursday, Esper said he has directed the National Defense University to refocus its curriculum by dedicating 50 per cent of the coursework to China by academic year 2021. ”Today our strategic competitors China and Russia, are attempting to erode our hard-earned gains as they undermine international rules and norms and use coercion against other nations for their own benefit,” Esper said.

• 9-16, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Wednesday that while China has more ships, it’ll be a while before it can match the power of the US Navy. “I want to make clear that China cannot match the United States when it comes to naval power,” Esper explained at a RAND Corporation event. “Even if we stopped building new ships, it would take the [People’s Republic of China] years to close the gap when it comes to our capability on the high seas,” he said. “Ship numbers are important, but they don’t tell the whole story.” “They do not address the types of ships and the capabilities of the vessels being counted; the skill of the crews that operate them; the prowess of the officers that lead them; or the ways in which we fight and sustain them,” the secretary said.

• 8-27, US Secretary of Defence Mark Esper has called on countries to work with the United States to more effectively counter China in the Indo-Pacific, saying the region has become an epicentre of power competition with Beijing. In an address on Wednesday in Hawaii, Esper said the US defence department was increasingly focused on China as a threat in the Indo-Pacific and globally, in response to what he described as Beijing’s undermining of the international order and aggressive modernisation of its People’s Liberation Army. The US strategy would include strengthening alliances, bolstering US military capabilities and expanding a network of like-minded partners, he said. “The Indo-Pacific is the epicentre of a great power competition with China,” he said. “We’re not going to cede this region – an inch of ground, if you will – to another country, any other country that thinks their form of government, their views on human rights, their views on sovereignty, their views on freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, all those things, that somehow that’s better than what many of us share.”