WASHINGTON — 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 Program at the Center 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, Poling said, while Beijing “is quite happy with US distraction, with the frustration of US allies and partners."
China may take advantage of US carrier's absence
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 defense 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 US is not the big dog in the western Pacific anymore,” Clark said. “They would just prefer that countries in the region decide that China is the bigger power and the US 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.
Adm. Frank Bradley, head of the US Special Operations Command, has been trying to reassure regional allies of Washington’s commitment.
He was in Manila on Thursday, telling his Filipino counterparts that US special operations forces are ready to step up joint exercises to strengthen the countries' alliance. He also is expected to travel to Japan.
“We have the ability to project force, the United States, anywhere on the globe,” Bradley told The Associated Press. “And when the threat in the region of the Middle East has been attended to, we will redeploy and reorient and be able to project that force wherever else it might be required.”
“I also feel very confident in the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ ability to protect their sovereignty here and for us to remain close with them,” he said.
Evan Sankey, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute who focuses on US policy toward China, said aircraft carriers provide psychological assurance to US allies.
The absence of carriers in the region, he said, “adds to the general sense that the US is distracted by events in the Middle East.”
