[14] According to his memoir and personal website, Esper is Ranger, Airborne, Air Assault, Jumpmaster, and Pathfinder qualified, and completed Army courses ranging from Jungle Expert in Panama to the Command & General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

From 2002 to 2004, Esper served in George W. Bush's administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense for negotiations policy, where he was responsible for a broad range of nonproliferation, arms control and international security issues.

During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee in November 2017, Esper said that he would have three priorities as Army secretary: readiness, modernization (including of the military acquisition process and personnel system), and efficiency.

[42] Other initiatives to improve Army readiness included a new health and physical fitness regime, increases in training dollars, updated policies regarding individual deployability, and personnel changes that kept units together longer.

[49][50][51] A new Multi Domain Task Force (MDTF) was established in 2018 to better integrate and network a variety of combat functions, including air defense, long range fires, cyber, space, and electronic warfare.

According to Esper, the purpose behind establishing a fourth corps was to improve command and control in Europe, and help organize the war planning and preparations of the United States' Army and its NATO allies as they squared off against a revanchist Russia on the continent.

The movement of tens of thousands of U.S. troops and their equipment to exercise locations across Europe was designed to test the Army's deployability and readiness, while also reassuring NATO allies of the service's ability to respond quickly in a crisis.

By the spring of that year, only a few months before Esper became Secretary of Defense, the service canceled another forty-one programs, and delayed or reduced thirty-nine more, to find an additional $13.5 billion in savings for its modernization efforts in the FY 2020 budget.

"[80] A Talent Management Task Force led by General Jim McConville, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, and Esper, went about setting up the market-based model for commanders and soldiers (beginning with the officer corps)—the buyers and sellers, respectively—that would give them more say in their careers, their timelines, and the assignments they took.

[87][88][89][90] Esper pushed on several fronts to advance this initiative: making professional license reciprocity a condition for where the Army would initiate or expand base investment decisions; working with state and federal lawmakers to mandate license reciprocity and incentivize the hiring of military spouses; reducing the number of PCS moves military families would make in order to give spouses job stability and their children school stability; reducing the on-base hiring timeline and requirements for civilian applicants; and expanding capacity at childcare centers while prioritizing the children of uniformed personnel over civilians.

Esper said that he would have four priorities as defense secretary: "build a more lethal force by increasing readiness and modernizing for the future to deter war"; "strengthen our alliances and attract new partners"; "reform the Department,"; and "focus on the well-being of our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and their families.

In a written response to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Esper wrote that he would "consider a variety of factors, but principally the threat to the United States, including its imminence; the nature of the U.S. interest at issue and its importance; whether nonmilitary means have been considered and are being integrated into any proposed response; whether we would have a clear and achievable objective for using force; the likely risks, costs, and consequences of the operation; whether the proposed action is appropriate and proportional; the views of the Congress; the willingness of foreign partners to support the action; and the legal basis in domestic and international law.

"[112]In his first formal message to all Department of Defense employees on June 24, 2019, a few weeks prior, Esper said he placed "great importance on a commitment by all, especially Leaders, to those values and behaviors that represent the best of the military profession and mark the character and integrity of the Armed Forces that the American people admire.

Failure to meet our defense objectives will result in decreasing U.S. global influence, eroding cohesion among allies and partners, and reduced access to markets that will contribute to a decline in our prosperity and standard of living.

[122][123][124] Esper made several changes in his first month in office to jump start his reform efforts, from altering the number, membership, scope, and purpose of meetings he held in the Pentagon to initiating a "Night Court" style review process focused across the department, beginning with the so-called fourth estate.

This first of its kind strategy, dubbed the Guidance for the Development of Alliances and Partnerships (GDAP), enabled the Pentagon to prioritize and align its security cooperation activities to build greater partner capacity; better articulate DOD's needs for their priority warfighting roles; and help them shape their militaries into more capable forces.

[155][156][157] Esper met with his European counterparts in February 2020 to discuss basing options for a new United States Army headquarters in Europe, bearing the name "V Corps" that had originally been established in World War I but was inactivated while stationed in Germany in 2013.

"[164][165] According to a DOD statement, "Secretary Esper's position with regard to [Uniform Code of Military Justice], disciplinary, and fitness for duty actions has always been that the process should be allowed to play itself out objectively and deliberately, in fairness to all parties.

[179] Esper pushed back on Trump's timeline because the conditions that would justify withdrawal had not been met - specifically a reduction in violence, progress at the negotiating table, and a credible pledge from the Taliban to publicly renounce al Qaeda, among other terrorist groups.

[180][184] A senior administration source said the Esper memo expressed concerns that further reductions with conditions unmet, not to mention a precarious withdrawal from the country, could alienate US allies, who at the time provided more service members in Afghanistan than the US; risk "Green-on-Blue" attacks on American service members by anxious Afghan soldiers; erode the credibility and standing of the US around the world; impact the Afghan military, which relies on US "enablers" such as logistics and air support; and, perhaps most importantly, undermine efforts to get the Taliban to live up to their end of the peace agreement.

[192] Esper reportedly directed European Command to develop options that met five key principles: 1) strengthen NATO, 2) reassure Allies, 3) enhance Russian deterrence, 4) improve U.S. strategic flexibility and EUCOM's operational agility, and 5) take care of American service members and their families.

[210] At a White House briefing on March 18, 2020, Esper said the Army Corps of Engineers met with New York officials and proposed building Alternate Care Facilities (ACFs) to create more bed space in anticipation of accelerating COVID caseloads.

The guidelines were structured to support risk-based decision-making in line with local conditions, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance, and in consultation with medical leadership, as Commanders' begin to return to normal operations .

[230] Others pointed out that many of the ten Democrats who signed the letter were under active consideration to be Joe Biden's running mate in the 2020 presidential election, suggesting this was a political act to burnish their own credentials for the job.

[244][245] In his memoir, Esper cited the success of Operation Warp Speed - along with maintaining the readiness of the U.S. Armed Forces, providing extensive DOD medical support to cities and localities across the country, and losing only one active duty service member to COVID - as an important accomplishment for the Defense Department during the pandemic.

[247] On June 1, 2020, amid widening nationwide civil unrest, Trump at one point demanded the deployment of 10,000 active-duty troops to the streets of Washington and other U.S. cities in a heated meeting in the Oval Office with Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who opposed this request.

"[261] Esper broke with Trump by publicly opposing invocation of the Insurrection Act of 1807 and the deployment of active-duty troops in American cities, saying that "the National Guard is best suited for performing domestic support to civil authorities ...

[272][273] In the weeks leading up to the November election, Esper was reportedly speaking with defense committee leaders in Congress who were drafting a bipartisan provision to rename the bases in order to help shape the final version.

A military official reported that Esper felt this issue was important to the morale and readiness of the force, while a DOD spokesman said "As is normal and expected, the department works with Congress to provide the administration's concerns and views regarding proposed defense-related legislation - particularly when House and Senate versions of defense bills are being reconciled and finalized".

[301][302] Also in 2021, Esper joined the board of directors for the Atlantic Council,[303] and was named co-chair (along with Deborah Lee James) of a commission tasked with making recommendations to the Pentagon reform on improving the Defense Department's ability "to rapidly absorb commercial technologies" from the private sector in order to enhance the U.S. military's warfighting capabilities.