US Navy Overstretch: How the Pacific Lost its Aircraft Carrier to the Middle East

Naval power is an important force that structures and shapes the world on this blue planet of ours. Historically, for example, the famously powerful British navy helped contribute to the growth of industries in piracy and the trade in enslaved people across the Atlantic. It then later became the most significant player in efforts to curb these industries. And Chinese treasure fleets in the fifteenth century projected Ming Dynasty power across Asia and the Pacific, impressing smaller states into vassalage and using this to create security and protection for carrying on with a relatively isolationist political life in the great Middle Kingdom of Asia. 

Most recently, in its naval dynamics, the world has been structured by the behemoth of US naval power. With two long-pacified land borders to the north and south, and flanked by oceans to the East and West, naval domination of the Pacific and Atlantic has been essential to completing the square of American territorial security. But its navy has also allowed the US to project power and pursue its interests in regions further afield. Since the Vinson-Trammell Act of 1934, which expanded the US Navy -  and through fighting wars across two oceans simultaneously to defeat fascism in Europe and Japanese imperialism in the Pacific, to asserting the principles of freedom of navigation around the world and enforcing UN sanctions by blockade - the US Navy has dominated the waves and shaped peoples’ lives everywhere.

Yet the strategic picture of the US Navy – how it is used and maintained to achieve the intended ‘bigger-picture’ goals of its political masters – appears in recent times to have undergone a shift towards wasted capabilities and fulfilling a lesser role than recent generations will have known. This is not to doubt its firepower or destructive and defensive capacities – so long as enough armaments remain in store – and nor is it to comment on the US Navy’s doctrine or tactics as applies to particular theatres. But contending with China in the Pacific has for some time been the sole US strategic concern, specifically involving another state. The sources of US military projection are starting to look thinly stretched, whilst Chinese naval power increasingly acts as an advanced prong of a forceful bid to shape the future of Pacific and Arctic trading routes.

Recently, amid fears for the state of the crew aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, who have been at sea in the Middle East ‘dealing with’ the situation in the Strait of Hormuz and Iran for approaching 250 straight days without docking, the US announced the Lincoln would be returning to dock and will be replaced by another vessel that will join the US 5^th fleet in the Middle East.

The-Artist-Formerly-Known-As-Secretary-Of-Defence, Pete Hegseth, had come under some fire (metaphorically) in 2025 for spending extraordinary amounts of the defence budget on luxuries for the military, like lobster tails, ribeye steaks, and a Steinway piano. But the crew of the Lincoln were reportedly down to rice and tortillas as rations, and there were reports of personnel attempting to throw themselves overboard, before it was announced they would return to port. Trump was clearly unhappy about having the Lincoln return, but it is his visions for US power which are central to this: an arduous, and continuing deployment in the Middle East is suggestive of yet another great power quagmire from which the US cannot seem to extricate itself, but for which it also does not have the right resources for an optimal conclusion. There are even some reports that Trump seeks to redesign Navy vessels to better suit his aesthetic preferences, much to the chagrin of naval personnel.

In the reporting that the vessel to relieve the Lincoln will be the USS George Washington, which began to leave the Pacific in the direction of the Middle East, one shocking fact stood out: no US aircraft carrier will remain in the Pacific. For a state built on the projection of its power across the Pacific, this is no small matter. It is not quite right, however, to say that it is unprecedented. In 2024, the US’ sole aircraft carrier in the Pacific was dispatched to join the 5^th Fleet for operations in the Middle East, leaving none in the Pacific for three weeks until another could be deployed to the Pacific theatre. That carrier departing the Pacific? The USS Abraham Lincoln, of course. And the carrier that was redeployed to eventually fill the gap left by the Lincoln in the Pacific? The USS George Washington. Crucially, this means the USA is not actually plugging gaps in its naval capacity to stretch to meet the demands of the visions and ambitions of its executive branch. It has just been shifting the pieces of its navy around the board, having them chase each other around the world and trading off where the gaps appear - the colloquial robbing Peter to pay Paul. And the strategic theatre that is now paying the price is the Pacific, the very one in which the USA claims its competition with China is a priority commitment.

The toll of this overstretch is not just mental, but material too. The emptying of weapons stockpiles has already been alluded to, but such a long duration of any vessel’s deployment in active combat missions racks up a huge amount of maintenance and repair. Indeed, the US has eleven aircraft carriers in total, so it does have vessels to send to the Pacific in theory. But only three are deployed, and eight are in port or undergoing maintenance, emphasising the point that these things take a real beating when being heavily used and are not anything like tools of infinite durability. Clearly dragging on longer than anticipated - and perhaps misled into taking on Iran so directly in the first place - the Strait of Hormuz appears to herald signs that the US is overcommitting its naval resources and is starting to exhaust itself in the Middle East, at the expense of the Pacific. 

Long-term, a streamlined AUKUS deal will see Australia bolster US forces in the balance against the threat of Chinese naval dominance of the Pacific. Though with long-range nuclear-propelled Virginia-class submarines, and not the aircraft carriers which the US Navy possesses. A US aircraft carrier – seen as essential for missions that would be involved in responding to military aggression against Taiwan – will doubtlessly be deployed to the Pacific in the future. But all the while, China continues to lap up international influence through its diplomatic efforts and economic policies, such as its Belt and Road Initiative. 

These are dangerous moments for the USA, as its world-dominating credentials are increasingly questioned. To be sure, this is not the end of US naval power (far from it). The US Navy retains huge and lethal capabilities. But it is an important moment to reflect on a key feature that has structured our world for generations. US military resources are being used in frivolous and capricious ways by the current US administration, and are starting to make it look much weaker in the international arena, not stronger. If one is looking for signs of a new order, a new pattern of naval dominance that will change the structure of the world, the US is currently putting out some bad adverts for itself.

Image: Unsplash/William Rudolph

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