BRUSSELS — It has been a taxing week for Mark T. Esper, the acting defense secretary, who did not have that title just a few days ago.
Last Thursday, Mr. Esper, 55, was still Army secretary, sitting in the White House as officials weighed launching airstrikes against Iran. Four days later he assumed the role of Pentagon chief to fill a sudden leadership void from the departure of Patrick M. Shanahan after just four months.
And on Wednesday Mr. Esper took the stage at NATO headquarters in Brussels, wedged between what could be a looming conflict in the Middle East and convincing America’s top allies that he was the right person for the job.
Mr. Esper’s opening statement during a news briefing Thursday tried to do just that, ensuring that nothing has changed at the Pentagon — despite his seemingly overnight ascension. He implored allies to take a harder stance on Iran after a spate of incidents in the Strait of Hormuz, including the shooting down of an American drone by Iranian forces.
“Iran’s actions are an international problem that affects many nations,” Mr. Esper said. He encouraged NATO allies to “voice their opposition to Iran’s bad behavior.”
Mr. Esper also made clear his commitment to the alliance, noting that he flew to Brussels on the second day of his job to attend the conference.
As the third person chosen by the Trump administration to occupy the Pentagon’s top civilian position, Mr. Esper assumes the unspoken, de facto role of serving as a bulwark to the president’s untethered tweets and occasional threats to disrupt the NATO alliance.
Mr. Trump has railed against allies for not meeting the NATO goal of spending 2 percent of their economic output on defense. Last year he discussed withdrawing completely from NATO. He told top national security officials that he did not see the point of the alliance.
For Mr. Esper, that balancing act of assuaging nervous allies and pleasing Mr. Trump has only complicated the list of security issues confronting the 70-year-old alliance, including the impending collapse of a Cold War missile treaty and the negotiations to end the nearly 18-year-old war in Afghanistan.
When Mr. Esper’s predecessor, Mr. Shanahan, debuted at NATO in February, he made sure to emphasize military spending goals, singling out Germany, frequently a target of Mr. Trump’s tirades.
On Wednesday, Mr. Esper did much the same, during his brief opening remarks with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg upon arrival at the alliance’s new headquarters for a meeting of defense ministers.
“There are a lot of important things we need to engage on,” Mr. Esper said. “First and foremost of importance to the United States will be more equitable and increased burden-sharing by all of our allies.”
But with European allies still rueful about the departure of Mr. Trump’s original defense secretary, Jim Mattis, Mr. Esper’s arrival was eyed mostly with ambivalence. Many European officials in NATO seem convinced that no one will fill the shoes of Mr. Mattis, a retired Marine general, who was a strong cheerleader for the alliance.
Officials from France and Germany noted Mr. Esper’s résumé and time deployed to Europe as a young Army officer in the 1990s and little else, decidedly adopting a wait-and-see attitude.
Nonetheless after two days in meetings, NATO diplomats said Mr. Esper, a former Raytheon lobbyist, seemed much more well-versed in military and foreign policy affairs than Mr. Shanahan, a former Boeing lobbyist.
For the Pentagon, the trip’s purpose, according to one defense official, was simply to convey one word: continuity.
Last week, Mr. Shanahan announced that he would step down after revelations about domestic abuse charges in his family and questions about whether he could be confirmed.
Jim Townsend, who was a deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy under former President Barack Obama, said that by now many European allies view Mr. Esper and other Trump administration officials with sympathy, after having grown accustomed to the president’s actions.
“Defense ministers know by this time that these officials are operating under a whole new set of rules,” Mr. Townsend said.
Those rules, at least for Mr. Esper’s first trip to NATO as acting defense secretary, included communicating to the other 29 defense ministers what the United States believes is the growing threat from Iran and the risk of military escalation in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical conduit for petroleum shipping.
“The main focus of the allies is to de-escalate,” Mr. Stoltenberg told reporters during a news conference. “To avoid conflict.”
Last week an Iranian surface-to-air missile shot down an American drone. Tehran said the aircraft, an RQ-4 Global Hawk, was flying in Iranian airspace. Washington said it was well within international boundaries. Within hours American military forces were preparing to strike radar sites and other targets in the country. The Pentagon has accused Iran and its proxies of attacking several merchant vessels in May and June.
“A lot of these defense ministers will agree that Iran is a big problem,” Mr. Townsend said. It was not, he said, as though Mr. Esper had appeared “in front of a hostile audience.”
Mr. Esper said his team would be returning to NATO headquarters in July to give a fuller briefing on Iran and what he called its “malign influence.”
One of the more pressing issues for NATO is the Aug. 2 deadline set by the United States for Russia to comply with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or I.N.F., a 1987 arms-control pact designed to keep land-based nuclear missiles out of Europe.
The United States, which has long accused the Russians of violating the treaty, announced in February that unless the Russians complied, it would withdraw in six months. Russia has denied the accusation and said in March that it would also quit the treaty, raising fears of a buildup of a previously banned class of weapons.
Mr. Esper blamed Russia for the threatened collapse of the treaty, calling it “a dangerous and entirely avoidable reality.”
During his time in Brussels, Mr. Esper also met with his Turkish counterpart, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, to discuss Turkey’s purchase of an advanced Russian surface-to-air missile system, the S-400. The deal has been an enduring problem for the Pentagon, and another issue that Mr. Esper inherited from his predecessors.
If Ankara takes delivery of the missile system, the United States has said it would not deliver four F-35 fighter jets previously sold.
A senior defense official said that no progress had been made over the dispute, and that Turkey remains vulnerable to economic retribution under a 2017 law known as the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. The Pentagon recently said it would stop training Turkish pilots on the jets starting July 31.
Source : Nytimes
