Trump tabs classmate of Pompeo to run Pentagon

Mark Esper will be taking command of the Pentagon at a tenuous time in the world.

Esper, 55, whom US President Donald Trump named acting secretary of defense on Tuesday, is a graduate of the US Military Academy and a veteran of the first Gulf War. He is a member of the West Point Class of 1986, as is current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Esper will replace acting Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan, who withdrew his name for consideration for the permanent post after news reports emerged of a domestic violence incident at his residence in 2010.

Trump also said on Tuesday that it was "most likely" Esper would be given the job permanently.

Esper, who had been serving as secretary of the US Army, will take over at the Department of Defense amid a tense situation in the Middle East, where two oil tankers, one from Japan and one from Norway, hit mines in the Gulf of Oman on June 13.

Pompeo has blamed Iran for the incidents, but Teheran has denied responsibility.

Esper, in an interview with the Washington Examiner in May, discussed what the US Army faces in current times.

"The Army I grew up in was focused on high-intensity conflict against a peer competitor called the Soviet Union. That's what we're going back to in many ways. We now know that we're in an era of great power competition. China and Russia are our principal concerns," he told the Examiner.

"And so we need to be able to fight high-intensity conflict against a Russia or China. … That's the type of combat we need to be ready for."

The term "great power competition" has been used in the US to describe the US-China bilateral relationship. It is that competition that is seen as a factor in the ongoing trade dispute between the two nations.

On Tuesday, the leaders of the two nations spoke by telephone.

Trump said he looks forward to meeting with President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 Leaders' Summit in Osaka, Japan (June 28-29), to discuss in-depth bilateral ties and issues of common concern, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Washington values China-US economic and trade cooperation, and it hopes that the working teams of the two sides will communicate and find solutions to their existing differences soon, Trump said, adding that he believes the world would like to see an agreement reached.

Xi said that China-US ties have encountered some difficulties recently, which are not in the interests of either side. Cooperation benefits both countries, while antagonism harms both, he said.

Esper, who has worked on nuclear nonproliferation and arms control, said that the least likely military event is a "global nuclear war", with terrorism incidents more probable.

"However, one of the most dangerous places is high-intensity conflict. That's where we could lose a major war … So we have to build a military that's capable of dealing with Russia or China because we know that over the last 18 years, as we focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, the Russians and Chinese focused on modernizing their force and trying to close the gap with the United States. That's what has our attention right now."

Esper received a master's degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1995, and a doctorate in philosophy from George Washington University in 2008.

He served as an infantry officer with the 101st Airborne Division and deployed with the "Screaming Eagles" during the 1990-91 Gulf War.

Esper has moved frequently among military, political and business circles. He was chief of staff at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, from 1996 to 1998. From 1998 to 2002, Esper served as a senior staffer for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

He has been a policy director for the House Armed Services Committee and worked in the George W. Bush administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense for negotiations policy, where he was responsible for nonproliferation, arms control and international security issues. Esper was a director for national security affairs at the Senate from 2004 to 2006. He was executive vice-president at the Aerospace Industries Association and later served as national policy director in Senator Fred Thompson's 2008 presidential campaign.

From 2008-2010, Esper served as executive vice-president for the US Chamber of Commerce's Global Intellectual Property Center and as vice-president for Europe and Eurasian Affairs. He was hired as vice-president of government relations at defense contractor Raytheon in July 2010.

He and his wife Leah are the parents of three adult children.

Zhang Yunbi in Beijing contributed to this story.