US Leaves Western Pacific Without a Carrier

Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the administration says "the Pacific is supposed to be the most important behind the Western Hemisphere" — but is instead "doing the exact opposite" of its stated goal of pulling out of the Middle East. Pacific allies are unsettled by the administration's unpredictability, Poling said, while Beijing "is quite happy with U.S. distraction, with the frustration of U.S. allies and partners."

Bryan Clark, a former Navy submariner and defense analyst at the Hudson Institute, said no one expects China to invade Taiwan because a carrier left — but the absence hands Beijing an opening. "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," Clark said.

Evan Sankey, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, said carriers provide psychological assurance to allies, and their absence "adds to the general sense that the U.S. is distracted by events in the Middle East."

On the crews: Robert Farley, who teaches national security and diplomacy at the University of Kentucky, said warships and sailors can only take so much. "People don't get enough rest. It's psychologically exhausting. And R&R is part of keeping the crew healthy," he said. "We are dealing with well-known limits on the capacity of a crew to operate at top efficiency over time. And that just declines."

Democratic lawmakers have called for investigations and greater visibility into conditions aboard the Lincoln.

Clark blamed the squeeze on planning: "If we were going to mobilize to do this kind of conflict, and we anticipated it might go this long, we might have done some changes to the carrier schedule to make sure more would be available."