The Interview Editors
Donald Trump sacked his defence secretary Mark Esper on Monday, in his first major official act since losing re-election.
“Mark Esper has been terminated,” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Christopher Miller, a senior intelligence official, would take over as acting defence secretary “effective immediately”, he added.
Trump fell out with his defence secretary in June after Esper said he was opposed to sending US troops into American streets to quell civil unrest, except as a last resort, amid a host of anti-racism protests.
Trump had publicly mocked Esper as “Yesper”, a nickname from colleagues who had previously seen him as a yes-man who failed to stand up to Trump.
Esper also supported a bipartisan congressional effort to rename military bases that were named after former confederate leaders, some of whom owned slaves. Mr Trump vowed to veto the annual defence spending bill if it contained such provisions.
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Resignations are common for high-ranking political appointees of outgoing administrations, but the announcement on Twitter of Mr Esper’s firing was especially unusual in that Mr Trump has not yet conceded defeat in the presidential election — and there are still two months before the Biden administration takes office.
“Firing a competent defence secretary with two months remaining in his term is exactly the kind of petty recklessness that made so much of the Republican defence establishment support Joe Biden for president,” said Kori Schake, a foreign policy and defence expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
James Stavridis, a retired admiral and former US commander of European and Southern forces, argued the move “makes no sense at this point”.
“Things are already unstable internationally, and this does not help,” he said on Twitter, adding he hoped opponents would not seek to take advantage.
Mr. Miller a former Green Beret, currently serves as director of the national counter-terrorism centre, a unit within the US intelligence community. He is a veteran of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
During Trump’s administration, he worked first as a counter-terrorism official at the National Security Council and then as a senior official for special operations at the Pentagon. Mr Miller was sworn in to his latest role in August amid a controversial shake-up at the office of the director of national intelligence.
One former colleague in the intelligence community described Mr Miller to the Financial Times as “quirky” and “a good guy with a great temperament”. Another described him as “a professional” and “a known quantity”.
The Pentagon declined to comment and referred inquiries to the White House.
Credit: Financial Times
