POLITICS JUNE 18, 2019 / 7:26 PM / UPDATED 3 HOURS AGO

With Esper, Pentagon inherits an army veteran long focused on China

Phil Stewart
5 MIN READ

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In the opinion of Army Secretary Mark Esper, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. military, Washington was late to recognize that America will be locked in a strategic competition with China for years to come.

Esper says he was focused on Beijing’s growing military might long before the Pentagon rolled out a National Defense Strategy in 2018 that prioritized competition with China and Russia over counter-insurgencies in places like Afghanistan.

China has been a personal priority as far back as the 1990s, including when Esper worked as an aide on Capitol Hill after more than a decade in the Army, he told Reuters.

“We may be a little bit late - we are late - coming to the recognition that we are in a strategic competition with China,” Esper said in an April interview.

He noted he was a Pacific war planner on the Army Staff, the branch’s senior leadership body, in the mid-1990s. “The issue of China, competition with China, China’s capabilities, is not a new one to me ... That is both the foundation and the shaping of my views on these various issues, because I’ve watched this evolution for 20 years now.”

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