US pulls last aircraft carrier in Asia as Trump focuses on Iran
President Donald Trump’s war against Iran is stretching the limits of US aircraft carriers and leaving the western Pacific without one of the key American warships as China shows more signs of aggression.
The USS George Washington is departing the Pacific and expected to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East amid growing concerns about mental health and supply issues aboard the long-deployed carrier.
The Lincoln has had its time at sea extended from its original May return date to support operations against Iran.
The lack of a US carrier in the Pacific may be short-lived if the Navy deploys another in the next couple of months.
But it shows how the open-ended operations with Iran are running some American sailors ragged, analysts say, while the Trump administration further retreats from the Asia-Pacific region and focuses on the Western Hemisphere.
“The administration says that the Pacific is supposed to be the most important behind the Western Hemisphere,” said Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
Instead, the US is “doing the exact opposite” of its previously expressed goal of pulling out of the Middle East.
American allies in the Pacific are unsettled over the unpredictability of the Republican administration, Mr Poling said, while Beijing “is quite happy with US distraction, with the frustration of US allies and partners”.
Beijing sees the US military presence in the region as a threat to China’s rise and an obstacle to its ambition to seize Taiwan, the self-governing island it claims as its own.
But the United States has argued that the Pacific region is too important economically to lose.
No-one expects China to invade Taiwan because an American aircraft carrier has left the region.
But the carrier’s absence gives the Chinese another opportunity to show its strength, said Bryan Clark, a former Navy submariner who is a defence analyst at the Hudson Institute.
“They’re using this as part of the narrative to demonstrate to the Philippines, to Japan, to Indonesia and others that the U.S. is not the big dog in the western Pacific anymore,” Mr Clark said.
“They would just prefer that countries in the region decide that China is the bigger power and the U.S. is not able to guarantee their security anymore.”
China conducted naval exercises this week with Indonesia and recently has shown signs of aggression toward Japan and the Philippines, two key US allies that also have territorial disputes with Beijing.
China carried out military drills this month near the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. Both China and the Philippines have claims over the shoal.
Last month, a Chinese guided-missile destroyer conducted a live-fire exercise off Japan’s southernmost island of Okinotori.
Mr Trump has relied heavily on aircraft carriers to support military operations during his second term.
For example, the USS Gerald R Ford returned home in mid-May after an 11-month deployment, the longest since the Vietnam War, during which it supported the US fight against Iran and the capture of Venezuela’s then-leader, Nicolas Maduro.
The Ford had experienced a fire in a laundry space that forced the carrier to turn around and return to the Mediterranean Sea for repairs and left hundreds of sailors without places to sleep.
Meanwhile, the Lincoln has spent a record uninterrupted time at sea of more than 240 days. Democratic politicians have been calling for investigations and greater visibility into conditions aboard the ship.
Warships and their crews can only handle so much, said Robert Farley, who teaches national security and diplomacy at the University of Kentucky and often writes about aircraft carriers.
“People don’t get enough rest. It’s psychologically exhausting. And R&R is part of keeping the crew healthy,” Mr Farley said.
“Sometimes it’s framed as, ‘These people haven’t had a vacation.’ But we are dealing with well-known limits on the capacity of a crew to operate at top efficiency over time. And that just declines.”
Michael Swaine, a senior research fellow in the Quincy Institute’s East Asia Programme, questions the future need for aircraft carriers as warfare rapidly changes.
Carriers can be more easily targeted with drones and missiles, particularly by an adversary such as China, Mr Swaine said, while smaller ships and submarines can be as effective in striking targets as the fighter jets that launch off a carrier.
Top Navy officials have indicated a desire to move away from a heavy reliance on carriers.
Admiral Daryl Caudle, chief of naval operations, told The Associated Press in February that he wants to convince commanders to use smaller, newer ships and other assets instead of consistently turning to huge aircraft carriers.
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