The United States has pulled its last aircraft carrier in Asia as President Donald Trump focuses on Iran and the Western Hemisphere. 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.

Impact on the Pacific Region

The lack of a US carrier in the Pacific may be short-lived if the Navy deploys another in the next couple of months. However, 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.

American allies in the Pacific are unsettled over the unpredictability of the Republican administration, according to Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. China sees the US military presence in the region as a threat to its rise and an obstacle to its ambition to seize Taiwan, the self-governing island it claims as its own.

China’s Growing Influence

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. The absence of a US carrier in the region gives China another opportunity to demonstrate its strength, said Bryan Clark, a former Navy submariner who is a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute.

Original reporting: NBC10 Boston — read the source article.