And it will be even worse next time
I’ve been working my way through former SecDef Mark Esper’s memoirs, “A Sacred Oath.” You’ve probably heard about its one or two re-reveals of previously reported information. But the real interest of the book arises from a metaphor Esper uses a couple of times.
Esper compares the Pentagon to a soccer ball. There are rules about how it is to be handled. Break the rules – grip the ball with the fingers – and the ball will be briefly indented. But the rule-breaker cannot grip forever. Once released, the ball rapidly recovers its shape.
Esper details instances that support his soccer-ball analogy. EG in a spasm of irritation in December 2019 then-President Trump issued an order that all US forces be removed from Germany. Trump was egged on by his hot-tempered then-ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell.
Esper quotes Grenell about the troop withdrawal: “That will get their [Germany’s] attention.”
He then quotes himself: “Of course it will, and many other countries too, including Russia, but for all the wrong reasons.”
But an order is an order. So Esper agreed to a “comprehensive review … to look at our troop presence around the world,” including European Command. Obviously such a review would take a long time – and as it happened, Trump had left office before the review was completed.
Similar slow-dragging methods were used against Trump’s demand for a big military parade through the center of Washington.
On the evidence of his book, Esper is satisfied that his methods more or less worked. “Despite the friction in my relationship with Trump, I felt I was still able to manage the president and his worst instincts.” (369)
And here really is the crux of the book and its argument. Esper seems to have been a competent manager, moderately conservative, a loyal American. Trump offended him in many ways, but those offenses are presented as distractions from more important work.
As Esper writes: “[A]lthough many things he suggested ranged from appropriate to outlandish, none ever rose to a level that warranted consideration of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.” Esper situates this estimate before the “shoot them in the legs” comment of June 2020, but the estimate remains clearly his view throughout his service. As he writs on p. 5: “There was another major concern I had to factor in to the equation: ‘Who would replace me?'”
The book is intended to reassure: Yes, some excesses occurred, but they were managed and contained. Trump had some good instincts, Esper writes in more than one place, and they could be appealed to – and if not, the worst orders could be mitigated or delayed.
But here are the haunting questions left behind:
1) As I’ve written before, if Trump is returned to office, this time the velociraptors will know how the door handles work. He will bring with him more committed followers, who may defeat the methods of evasion and delay.
2) Passive resistance tactics only go so far. If Trump signs the paper exiting NATO – NATO is kaput, no matter how much DoD may wish to evade and delay. As Esper acknowledges, he could not protect the Vindman brothers from Trump’s retaliateion.
3) Esper describes himself as a man of “conventional” views. Except for the very, very rare Henry Kissinger, the senior levels of government are not staffed by highly imaginative people. Nor probably should they be. Keep the system working, that’s the job. But that natural bureaucratic propensity leaves the system vulnerable when it confronts a novel threat outside its expectation: like a corrupt, anti-constitutional president at the top of the machinery of state. Aside from delay, top managers didn’t know how to cope. So in their memoirs after the fact, they console themselves: the system worked on my watch, more or less. Or if it didn’t work, it can now be fixed, because surely after January 6, Trump and Trumpism must be finished. Americans would never stand for a repeat, would they?
All of which reminds me of something else I said often in the first weeks of the Trump presidency: “The sunny American confidence that everything will turn out all right it itself the greatest threat to everything turning out all right.”
Originally tweeted by David Frum (@davidfrum) on May 22, 2022.