A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times – An Instant New York Times Bestseller: A Pentagon Insider's Tumultuous Years Under President Trump

by Mark T. Esper

In a matter of weeks, we could have 107 aircraft—more than four times the number than the year before—flying over the White House, where the president and his supporters would be accused of holding a political event. Fighting vehicles, rocket launchers, air-defense systems, and other military hardware positioned on the South Lawn would be seemingly protecting them all; at a minimum they would be political props to convey the candidate’s strength, toughness, and seriousness. It was not a good optic for the nation, and it was not a good look for the military. It made no sense to any of us at the Pentagon, but at the White House, we would learn, it made all the sense in the world.

The White House chief of staff was loyal to the president to a fault and remained fully committed to the task of getting him reelected, as I mentioned before.

General Milley, still troubled by Trump’s attempts to put him in charge of civil unrest response on June 1 and sensitive to the social media backlash against him, spoke up about his role, focusing on the “obligation” he had “to provide best military advice.” Meadows said he understood but added something to the effect that Milley had to support or be loyal “to the president.” Milley shot back immediately that his “duty was not to support the president”—as Meadows requested—but “to follow legal orders and his oath.” He was trying to educate Meadows, but it caught the chief of staff off guard. Meadows became defensive, straightened up in his chair some, and then launched into a series of arguments that masqueraded as questions. The room started getting tense again. Milley explained his role well, stressing that, under the law, he was an “adviser to the president and the secretary of defense on military matters.” He had “no formal place in the chain of command,” he said, which flowed from the president to the secretary of defense, and from there—from me—to either the combatant commanders or the service secretaries. Milley was doing a good job explaining his role to Meadows, but I didn’t want the chief of staff to think my silence, as the chairman spoke, in any way suggested a lack of support on my part for what Milley was saying. So, I jumped in and doubled down on Milley’s main points, emphasizing the difference between a civilian political appointee such as myself and a uni...

As such, I replaced fighter aircraft with demonstration teams like the Blue Angels, pulled an airplane or two out here and there, and canceled others. I eventually reduced the final number down into the low 30s—closer enough to the 2019 numbers, and a far cry from the starting point of 107.

One of the strategies I learned over the years was to, rather than trying to solve the problem as it is, simply enlarge it. Which was what I did. With a map of the United States in front of me on my desk at home, and a general understanding of aircraft ranges and flight times, I figured that many of the planes—especially the bombers—could easily fly the East Coast south from New England to D.C. I did a rudimentary calculation of the distances between cities and bases, and figured out that if we started early enough, the planes would end up over the White House later in the afternoon, on time. And rather than a tribute to Donald Trump, we could call the flyovers “A Salute to the Great Cities of the American Revolution.” The route would begin at Boston, move south to New York and Philadelphia, and then go on to Baltimore before heading to the capital. Now, the flyover was no longer focused on a single city, and arguably not a single person, but several cities and thousands of Americans. I called my team and they liked it. Milley thought it was a good idea too.

“If you don’t want him on the list, then you should remove him, but I don’t support it. It would be the wrong thing to do,” I shouted. Mark Meadows yelled back, “He’ll never get promoted.” With that, the conversation abruptly ended. We all knew why the president didn’t like Alexander Vindman, but the fact that he continued to punch so far down at an Army lieutenant colonel was undignified and wrong. The National Security Council is staffed with officers from all the armed services, as well as people from other executive branch departments and agencies. Alexander Vindman was one such staffer, an Army lieutenant colonel who served as the director for European Affairs on the NSC beginning in the summer of 2018.

In my attempts to get the aid released, I tried every argument and strategy I could muster. I wanted to address the concerns voiced to me by the president but also ensure we followed the law. Trump was impenetrable, however. When he complained about corruption in Ukraine, I told him, “I agree,” but pointed out that “they are making progress,” and that “tackling corruption is a priority for Zelensky.” I said to the president, “Denying him the aid would only undermine Zelensky’s efforts to do what you want—clean the place up.” Trump would listen, but my words had no discernible impact. The president would also say, sarcastically, “Our great allies, especially the Germans, need to help. They should be giving the most. Look at the map. Ukraine is a buffer for them” from the Russians. “The allies do need to help,” I agreed. I pointed out that they were contributing some, “but they could and should do more.” Therefore, I committed to “press them at an upcoming meeting at NATO that I am attending.” Still no effect. Trump would stare back with a slight frown on his face. He wasn’t buying it. When he questioned “Why are we even giving them this stuff [security assistance] in the first place,” I ran through a series of arguments that failed time and time again: deterrence of Russian aggression; showing Moscow our commitment to our partners; and aiding a democracy under siege. This wasn’t a hypothetical either. In 2014, Russian forces had invaded Ukraine and annexed the Crimea.

Throughout the impeachment process, Trump and some GOP lawmakers denounced Vindman for his testimony. Many of these same people also criticized the lieutenant colonel for appearing on Capitol Hill, despite being subpoenaed to do so. Television commentators from the right also joined in the fray. The fact is, Vindman didn’t have a choice. In the wake of these attacks, Vindman expressed serious concerns about the safety of his family, which the Army leadership worked to address. He was also concerned about retribution from the president, and the impact it might have on his career. The service was keeping close tabs on him. Indeed, Vindman met with General Jim McConville, the Army chief of staff, in early November 2019, regarding his situation. McConville assembled a team of lawyers, public affairs officers, and congressional liaisons to aid Vindman with the upcoming hearings. A two-star general was also assigned to assist and take care of him. The Army was doing all of the right things it could. On February 7, two days after the Senate acquitted Trump, the NSC fired Alexander Vindman. He was walked off the White House grounds that afternoon under escort. His brother, Yevgeny, who also served on the NSC staff as an Army lawyer, was dismissed as well. Earlier that day, a reporter asked me about possible retribution against Vindman during a press conference at the Pentagon, to which I replied, “We protect all of our persons—service members—from retribution or anything like that...

I was never briefed on why Vindman decided to retire when he did. There was some speculation that he felt pressure to act because of the impact his case was having on others caught in the fray. On July 2, 2020, Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) had announced that she would block Senate confirmation of over 1,100 military promotions until she received written confirmation that Vindman’s promotion wouldn’t be stymied.

Where I drew a hard line was the Presidential Personnel Office’s attempts to go after career civilians and uniformed officers. This happened on a few occasions after McEntee installed his people at the Pentagon in October 2020. It was these new loyalists who would eventually implement the orders to remove Anderson and others, and then proceed to purge the Defense Policy and Defense Business Boards. As if going after current people wasn’t good enough, Trump’s loyalists once tried to recall retired four-star officers back to active duty to court-martial them for criticizing the president. In early May 2020, stories appeared in outlets like Breitbart that alleged retired Army general Stan McChrystal was advising Democrats on ways to use AI to “track down and counter Trump supporters on social media.”4 This spun the president up. It wasn’t the first time McChrystal was on the wrong side of Trump, though. But this latest report struck a nerve, even though McChrystal had not endorsed former vice president Joe Biden and later told another media outlet that his interest in advising a Democrat-aligned PAC was about ensuring the accuracy of information leading up to the election.5 The next thing I knew, Mark Milley and I were sitting in front of the president trying to talk him out of recalling McChrystal to active duty. To make matters worse, by the time we had arrived at the White House, someone in the Oval Office had thrown retired Navy admiral William H. McRaven, the commander w...

The same was true if the reaction by some was to reject nominees because they thought we were playing politics. We were concerned about this because two of the selectees were women: Army lieutenant general Laura Richardson to be the next head of Southern Command and Air Force general Jacqueline Van Ovost to be the future leader of Transportation Command. Both were highly qualified officers—and the best picks for the job. This was not about their gender, but I was concerned that some in the White House would allege that these were “woke” nominations, and act against them. The president removed me from office before the six promotion packets I approved were acted upon. I learned that somehow Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the new acting undersecretary for intelligence, got his hands on the packets and allegedly tried to scrub them all for “anti-Trump” bias. How someone outside the chain of command and not part of the normal process gained control of these promotion packets was troubling. The Joint Staff was able to get them back, however, but Cohen-Watnick apparently had already found a replacement for one of the officers I selected. This would have been terrible. Milley reportedly went to Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller and had this undone.

I would later tell folks that the Gallagher and Vindman examples were best understood as Trump pressing his thumb into a soccer ball. It’s hard to do, and he can cause a small indentation for as long as he keeps his finger in place, but the moment he relents it goes back to its original form. This is the strength of America’s institutions, and especially the U.S. military. It is both strong and resilient. And the armed forces’ values, ethos, rules, protocols, heritage, and most especially its oath to the Constitution guarantee that it will endure and remain apolitical. No single person, not even the commander in chief, can change the military’s DNA.

Ensuring diversity and inclusion was a readiness issue. We needed to recruit the best Americans to serve—regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or gender. Similarly, a soldier, sailor, airman, guardian, or Marine who feels included, respected, and valued will work harder, stay longer, and fight better.

I had to assume that every day was my last. I would often ask Jen Stewart, my chief of staff, “What are the ‘must do’ items for today in case I’m not here tomorrow?” or “What do I need to sign tonight, before I go home for the day, to advance the NDS or take care of the force?” We couldn’t rest; we were going to run through the tape. After months of work, for example, we published a new policy in early November regarding pregnant service members. As Army secretary, I had learned of anecdotes about female soldiers whose careers were mishandled by the service’s personnel system, or their respective leaders, because they were pregnant. This was an issue in the other services as well. Too often, outdated policies and procedural norms not based on medical fact meant that military women had to disrupt their assignments, forgo noncombat deployments, or even relinquish leadership positions—any of which could be detrimental to their career—due to pregnancy. In this day and age, with medical advancements, far better knowledge, and full incorporation of women in the workforce, it seemed like the armed forces were behind the times.

Paul really liked the idea I was putting forward—to keep the DoD out of politics by publishing a directive listing only the flags authorized to be flown on U.S. military bases and installations. We wouldn’t ban the Confederate flag explicitly, we just wouldn’t authorize it (or most any other flags) to be flown or displayed.

What has always united us remains clear—our common mission, our oath to support and defend the Constitution, and our American flag. With this change in policy, we will further improve the morale, cohesion, and readiness of the force in defense of our great Nation.

The doctrine I learned as a West Point cadet and Army officer was called AirLand Battle. The Army developed it to defeat the Soviets on the battlefields of Europe. To this day I can still cite its key tenets. I wanted that same understanding and emphasis in our professional education for today’s force. AirLand Battle stood the test of time and was still a credible and effective doctrine, but we needed something new. The simple fact that AirLand Battle only dealt with two domains—air and land—and today’s military was operating in five—air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace—was evidence enough that new doctrine was needed if we were to prevail on the modern battlefield against the Chinese and Russians. General Milley agreed. He grew up in the Army with AirLand Battle as well. Together we pushed the Army in 2018 to move forward with a new concept based on Multi-Domain Operations, which would become the centerpiece of the effort he and the Joint Staff would begin leading to establish a new war-fighting doctrine for all of the DoD. I was pleased to learn later that the DoD approved version 1.0 of the Joint Warfighting Concept in June 2021.

I also tasked the armed services to make the PLA the pacing threat—the military force against which we needed to organize, man, train, and equip U.S. forces to fight and defeat—in our professional schools, programs, and training, including the Army’s National Training Center and exercises such as the Air Force’s Red Flag. Identifying the PRC as the pacing threat was the right choice given the effort and resources Beijing was putting into modernizing their military and their war-fighting capabilities, and the fact that they saw us as their pacing threat.

When it came to the conventional balance of power between the United States and the PRC in Asia, China had made enormous gains over the previous two decades, though we still had clear overmatch in most areas. Two particular areas stood out, however. One was the PLA’s development of land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with conventional warheads. The Chinese had more than 1,200 of these weapons, many with ranges of well over two thousand miles. This gave them the ability to strike U.S. and allied forces and bases throughout the western Pacific. The numbers they had produced, and continued to build, gave them an advantage in capacity as well that could overwhelm our air defenses. And with the United States constrained from developing comparable systems in the intermediate range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers because of our obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia, we were unable to offset their capabilities with our own equivalent forces. In short, the PLA’s missile systems were integral to China’s anti-access/area-denial strategy for the western Pacific, and constituted a major obstacle for the United States to overcome if we ended up in a conflict with them.10 I supported the U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty in 2019, but not because I’m reflexively opposed to arms control. I had worked these issues for years. Arms control has a role to play in our national security tool kit. In fact, the Department’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review po...

Over time, we expect China will build a blue-water navy that can take the fight out of the western Pacific and into the eastern Pacific, and then globally—from the Persian Gulf to the Arctic, to the Indian Ocean and maybe the Atlantic—to assert themselves and advance their interests.

But as COVID hit the United States hard, Trump finally got more on board with his own policy, as I already stated. He was angry about Beijing’s handling of the virus, and the impact it was having on America. I suppose it was also easier to blame them for allowing the pandemic to spread in the early days, rather than taking responsibility for how he mishandled it over the course of a year. Lastly, he also wasn’t going to let Joe Biden outflank him when it came to getting tough on China.

The Navy had done this throughout its history, and it performs these operations today in contested waters all around the world, such as the Persian Gulf. If these operations aren’t routinely performed, then it’s too easy for a country’s baseless legal claims to become a de facto state of affairs. And so, as China’s illicit claims increased in recent years, so did U.S. operations. In 2020, the United States conducted more freedom of navigation transits through the Taiwan Strait, a recognized international waterway, than ever before. That said, I wanted to make sure we were neither increasing nor decreasing our operational tempo as we approached November 3; either way could send a wrong signal to Beijing.

America’s One China policy is no longer sufficient. It has been overcome by history and reality, making it an inadequate foundation upon which to rest such an important foreign policy and its supporting strategies going forward. For example, the government in Taiwan is now not only a thriving democracy, but it also no longer claims de jure sovereignty over all of China, as it did decades ago.

“There is at least one thing worse than fighting with allies—and that is to fight without them,” Winston Churchill famously remarked. The key to adequate deterrence in the future, let alone being able to fight and win against China, is not only about building a better military, it is about strengthening our allies and growing new partners—a core tenet of the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy. Allies and partners are an asymmetric advantage of ours that Beijing cannot match. That’s why China and Russia are trying to neuter this edge while they work to build their own sets of partnerships, including with each other. That is my concern when I see glimpses of South Korea’s seeming drift closer to the PRC. Or when Southeast Asian countries with long-standing ties to the United States hear the siren song from Beijing tugging at them with promises of economic and military assistance.

according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Japan pays about 38 percent of the cost to keep U.S. forces in Japan, while nearby Seoul pays around 30 percent of the bill to keep 28,500 American troops in Korea.2 However, while South Korea spent a healthy 2.7 percent of its GDP on defense, Tokyo spends no more than 1 percent. I thought it should be at least 2 percent. This was an issue I would often raise with the Japanese given the increasing challenges we faced from China, especially in the East China Sea.

U.S. Marine Corps presence on Okinawa, including the relocation of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma from Ginowan to a less densely populated part of the island; and Japan’s efforts to complete the purchase of Mageshima Island—an uninhabited outcrop located a little more than twenty miles from the southernmost Japanese mainland of Kyushu—to support aircraft-carrier landing practice.

Another major issue, which began in 2018 and bubbled over in the summer of 2019, was the deteriorating relationship between South Korea and Japan, and the effect it had on our collective deterrence in the region. It was frustrating to see these two long-standing allies of ours squabbling between themselves as North Korea tested ballistic missiles and developed nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Beijing went about flexing its muscles in the waters of the East China Sea and beyond. Even Russia benefited from this dispute. Domestic politics prevented Seoul from containing the matter—the result of a long and horrible history—and impacted the ability of the United States, Korea, and Japan to work more closely together to improve our collective security.

For example, I was eager to make changes to our posture on the peninsula that would upgrade our readiness and capabilities, such as replacing many of our permanently based fourth-generation fighters with fifth-generation F-35s. Although I was told XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX XXXXX, General Abrams, the four-star commander of U.S. Forces Korea, supported getting these advanced aircraft into Korea, especially since the Korean air force already had twenty F-35s in-country. Abrams liked this idea but thought it would be a political and diplomatic bridge too far, not to mention how North Korea might react. However, I believed this was also manageable if done collaboratively and over time. I proposed instead that we not permanently base the F-35s in Korea, but that we rotate them every six months or so back and forth from different units in the United States. A side benefit, I added, would be that we could keep the crews’ families in the States, where they had more stability, including better access to jobs for the spouses. Also important, more U.S. Air Force squadrons would get greater exposure to flying in-country with the Korean air force. This is what we were doing with the Army’s armored brigade combat teams, and it was working out fine.

The disappointing news was that these partners were reluctant to speak publicly about China’s bad behavior or stand up to them in multilateral forums, out of fear of the PRC’s intimidation tactics. While there are notable exceptions to the rule, these countries tend to speak out only when parochial interests are challenged and rarely about the overall threat to the free and open order from which they benefit. This is why U.S. leadership was and remains so necessary.

The combined exercise in the Indian Ocean between our two navies in July 2020, which featured the USS Nimitz carrier strike group, was important. But even more imperative was India’s decision—at our urging—to include Australia in the upcoming Malabar naval exercise among Indian, American, and Japanese forces. Including all members of the Quad in this military exercise, something Beijing opposed and New Delhi had long been reluctant to do, was a major step forward to building the partnerships needed to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific in the years ahead.

The fact was, I needed mechanisms in place—circuit breakers—should the White House try to circumvent me to do something inappropriate. There seemed to be too much of this happening as of late, and I wanted to be ready for anything. I was the sole civilian in the chain of command between the president and the uniformed military, after all, and had a critical role to perform. Moreover, the whole point of my game plan—the reason that I had taken so much crap over the last several months—was to be in this position, at this moment, to act. The essence of American democracy was free and fair elections, followed by the peaceful transition of power. If we didn’t have that, then what type of democracy did we have? It was my goal to protect this precious gift our Founders gave us. That’s what our oath to the Constitution was all about. I had several cards to play if we arrived at that point, but first and foremost, I knew this was a decision for civilian leadership—me, the Senate-confirmed secretary of defense—to make and act upon. Not the general officers. General Milley privately told me that he and the Joint Chiefs discussed such a scenario, and all had agreed to resign if pressed to break their oath. I told him that I couldn’t allow that situation to happen. I couldn’t allow them to be put in such a compromising position, especially if the presidential order was legal but grossly wrong or inappropriate. This would be a real dilemma, and it would be bad for the republic, the inst...

I never imagined, however, that these challenges would go on and on, and play out through November, December, and January. It was a national embarrassment that undermined our democracy, our credibility, and our leadership on the world stage.

one of the biggest decisions I made was to draw the line about when and how to engage terrorist groups around the world, not solely in Africa. In short, if a group had the means and intent to strike the U.S. homeland, then we kept the pressure on. If it had the intent but not the means, then we monitored it and occasionally took out key leaders and critical targets. If it didn’t have the intent, let alone the means, then it was time to end the mission.

Finally, we made commitments to our Afghan partners who risked their lives over the years to help us on the ground in Afghanistan. We promised many of them visas and the opportunity to resettle in the United States. There were probably tens of thousands of them and their families that we would also need to withdraw. This would become a massive administrative and logistical operation, one that we couldn’t accomplish in seventy-five days.

My biggest concern was that Congress, ever the political body that it was, might include language in the base-renaming provision that risked politicizing the military by, say, keeping open the door to name bases after political persons from the right or left. We needed to keep politics out of the military space. But to have a shot at doing so, we needed to share the views of the Department, and especially of the uniformed leaders, with Congress in advance. This was how things worked. A few weeks earlier, on October 16, I met privately with Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Army Chief of Staff Jim McConville about this matter. The Army had ten bases named after Confederate military leaders: Fort Hood, Fort Bragg, Fort Benning, Fort Gordon, Fort Lee, Fort A. P. Hill, Fort Polk, Fort Rucker, the Virginia National Guard post Fort Pickett, and the Louisiana National Guard’s Camp Beauregard. Both leaders were anxious to rename the bases, and they were concerned about how Congress might tell them to change the names. Milley couldn’t make it to the meeting, but he shared all these same views as well.

I had read too many stories about the DoD from Politico that I viewed as inaccurate, incomplete, or, in some cases, just plain false.

There, it was done. The time was 12:54 P.M. The president’s tweet came out right after that to seal the deal. So much for the good old days when you would have a sit-down with the commander in chief, talk through the matter, agree upon your departure date, and then do everything possible to make sure the new person is on-boarded properly before you left. But that was not Trump. He and his confidants didn’t understand personal leadership, didn’t realize the impact these things had on organizations and people, and certainly didn’t appreciate what it could mean for our nation’s security at the end of a hotly contested election in the beginnings of a major transition. Not only didn’t Trump understand, but he also didn’t care. It was all about him.

In this short note, I told them, “It has been the honor and privilege of a lifetime to serve alongside you as the 27th U.S. secretary of defense these last eighteen months in defense of our great Nation and adherence to our sworn oath to the Constitution.” I reminded everyone of the solid progress we made “implementing the National Defense Strategy” and “taking care of our military personnel, spouses, and their families,” while also launching “important initiatives” to improve diversity and inclusion in the armed services. I included in my note the reminder that “we have always put People and Country first”—an important message I thought the White House should hear as well. And I thanked them for remaining apolitical and living up to “those values and behaviors that represent the best of the military profession and mark the character and integrity of the Armed Forces the American people respect and admire”—the same message that I emphasized from day one.

General Milley stopped by quickly. He walked in my office and shut the door behind him. “I can’t believe he fucking fired you,” he said. We had talked and joked about this often in the past—gallows humor—but now it was real. He was very angry and upset, saying, “This is complete bullshit” and “I can’t believe he did this.” He paced back and forth a couple of times, threatening to resign as well. I thanked him—we had been through a lot together over the years, and his emotions reflected the depth of our partnership—but I stood there and said, “You can’t do that. You’re the only one left now to hold the line. You have to stay.” It was true, and we both knew it. He had to be around to push back, “especially now that we are entering a particularly dangerous period,” I said. “You have to stay for the military, the institution, and the country.” He was steaming, though. Not just with the fact that Trump fired me, but also with the way he did it. I kept telling him “It’s fine,” that “I never expected the president to be magnanimous.” We had seen this movie too many times before with other people Trump dismissed. “I’m sorry about this,” he said, as reality settled in. I suspect the chairman was now feeling very exposed and isolated as well, with me heading out the door and a supposed Trump guy on the way in. He was going to be in a tough place for the next seventy days or so. I felt for him.

As we drove away from the Pentagon one last time, I thought of Marshall’s famous statement about leadership, and hoped that I lived up to it: The most important factor of all is character, which involves integrity, unselfish and devoted purpose, a sturdiness of bearing when everything goes wrong and all are critical, and a willingness to sacrifice self in the interest of the common good.

As with so many other matters, all this scheming was completely unnecessary, because all the president ever had to do was issue a direct order to effect what he wanted. I never disobeyed a direct order from the president, but then again, I received so few to begin with. Rather, I worked to implement his signed policies and documents, like the National Defense Strategy, which went through a deliberate, coordinated process and had his explicit approval. Trump was, after all, the elected head of government. For some reason, though, the president was always reluctant to issue orders or ask people directly to do something. It seemed he didn’t want to own the decision, even though a president is inevitably responsible for everything. The Trump administration had a lot of shortcomings, but second only to the president’s personal style and crass behavior was how the White House treated people who were doing their best to serve the country under difficult circumstances. An organization is only as good as the people who constitute it, and that is true whether you serve in the military, work in a large corporation, are employed at a nonprofit, or are on the government payroll.

The most shocking and troubling event of the Trump presidency was the organization and incitement of a pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and stopped the constitutional process Congress was following to affirm the election and transfer of power to a new president. I never thought I would see what happened on Capitol Hill that day. It was the worst attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812, and maybe the worst assault on our democracy since the Civil War. And as someone who worked for many years in Congress, and had an office physically in the Capitol, I was shocked, angry, sad, and hurt by what I saw on TV that day. It was doubly hard to believe our fellow Americans conducted these criminal and seditious acts. I would put out my first real tweets as a private citizen that evening, condemning the assault on Congress and those involved in it.* Just days before, on January 3, 2021, I joined the nine other living former defense secretaries in an opinion piece—the first ever—calling upon the Defense Department to stay out of electoral disputes and to facilitate the peaceful handover of power—reiterating what I had said many times as secretary of defense.† We had no idea, of course, what would happen at the Capitol on January 6, three days later. We were concerned, however, about what was occurring at the time, with Trump loyalists at the Pentagon impeding the transition and Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill challenging the election results. The piec...

This afternoon’s assault on the US Capitol was appalling and un-American. This is not how citizens of the world’s greatest and oldest democracy behave. The perpetrators who committed this illegal act were inspired by partisan misinformation and patently false claims about the election. This must end now for the good of the republic. I commend Congressional leaders for meeting tonight to complete their Constitutional task of counting the electoral college votes that will affirm Joe Biden as the next president of the United States. As this transition plays out over the next two weeks, I am confident the U.S. military will stay out of politics, and remain true to its sworn oath to support and defend the Constitution, and the American people, as the most trusted and respected institution in the country.

American elections and the peaceful transfers of power that result are hallmarks of our democracy. With one singular and tragic exception that cost the lives of more Americans than all of our other wars combined, the United States has had an unbroken record of such transitions since 1789, including in times of partisan strife, war, epidemics, and economic depression. This year should be no exception.