Undermining the confidence of American allies, China will take advantage of the USS George Washington aircraft carrier’s redeployment from the Pacific Ocean to the Middle East. A Chinese state media editorial celebrated on Monday that these “waters have now become a zero-U.S.-carrier zone” and that “the sudden absence of a carrier in the Western Pacific is not an accident. It is a bill coming due.”
Beijing wants Taiwan and U.S. allies in the Philippines and Japan to question whether the United States has the means to defend them, let alone the resolve. It also wants other Pacific states, such as Vietnam and Malaysia, to consider whether strengthening relations with the U.S. is worth provoking Beijing’s anger.
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The U.S. has certainly opened the door for Beijing in this regard. The war with Iran has led to a foreseeable annihilation of U.S. munitions that would be crucial in any war with China. But the Strait of Hormuz stalemate has also forced the U.S. Navy to maintain a heavy presence of warships, including two carrier strike groups, in the Middle East.
The problem is that the George Washington is the only carrier based at a foreign port, in this case Japan. At least on paper, this ensures that the U.S. always has a carrier available for China-related contingencies. But other concerns also weigh on the Trump administration’s security ledger. In the Arabian Sea, the USS Abraham Lincoln has been deployed since last November. Its 5,000-strong crew and carrier air wing have had no port visits for more than six months and work 12-plus-hour shifts without days off. They are exhausted. Concerns from family members about morale, food, and facility issues have led the Pentagon to rush the George Washington to relieve the Lincoln so it can return home.
Still, this is a clear tactical gain at strategic expense.
With no aircraft carriers currently in the Western Pacific, China can escalate its message of growing military dominance. Amid high Sino-Russian tensions with Japan and increasingly violent territorial disputes with the Philippines, this is a major opportunity for Beijing. It allows China to suggest that while it is destined for regional supremacy, America is in retreat. China has recently sought to reinforce this message with nuclear missile tests and other posturing activities.
Expect, then, new Chinese naval deployments or more aggressive activity toward the Philippines, Taiwan, or Japan.
China is ultimately happy to present itself to these nations as an unpleasant but predictable bully that will restrain its punch in return for a victim’s practiced deference. And it is much easier to bully when the Navy is nowhere to be seen. While the USS Theodore Roosevelt and USS Carl Vinson aircraft carriers appear deployable on short notice, both currently remain at their West Coast ports. Even if ordered to deploy, they would need an indeterminate amount of time to prepare and at least 10-14 days to reach the Philippines.
China has a precedent here.
When the Biden administration diverted carriers from the Pacific to the Middle East in August 2024, China made a show of sailing its own aircraft carrier in waters between the Philippines and Taiwan. China’s People’s Liberation Army knows that controlling this sea lane would help shape the outcome of any U.S. war effort. Again, it is all about hard-edged messaging: showing U.S. allies and partners that betting on an already unpredictable America is an unaffordable risk. And while President Donald Trump seems to view the Navy through the prism of a personal vanity project, Xi Jinping is singularly focused on ensuring that the PLA serves only his and the Communist Party’s grand ambitions.
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This situation is utterly unacceptable from an American security perspective. As I noted before the Iran war began, that war was sure to entail “big costs” for China war readiness. Those costs have now come to pass. Iran cannot be allowed to control the Strait of Hormuz. But assuming an acceptable diplomatic accord can be reached, the U.S. should extricate itself from this war as soon as possible.
After all, its continuation plainly risks a grave loss of credibility and deterrence regarding an exponentially more critical concern: stopping China from winning a 21st-century-defining war.
