USS George Washington Leaves Asia Without a US Aircraft Carrier

In recent days, global attention has focused on the US Navy’s decision to withdraw the aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN-73), the only ship of its kind permanently stationed in Asia, from the Western Pacific. Based in Yokosuka, Japan, the Washington has been sent to the Middle East to relieve USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), whose deployment supporting operations against Iran has exceeded 250 days at sea. The move leaves the Indo-Pacific, at least temporarily, without a deployed US aircraft carrier, in the very region the Trump administration itself described as its “priority theatre”.

The development immediately prompted a public debate: how serious is it that the US has no aircraft carriers in Asia? Yet the answer is more nuanced than that question suggests, requiring an assessment of both the military capability that remains in place and the political message conveyed by the decision.

What has actually been withdrawn - and what has not

First, it is necessary to clarify what the absence of USS George Washington means in practical terms. It does not create a complete vacuum in US military capability in the Pacific; rather, it removes the most visible and adaptable asset for projecting power: the aircraft carrier.

The United States nevertheless retains substantial infrastructure across the region. Yokosuka base - the permanent home port of CVN-73 itself - remains operational, as do the Japanese bases at Kadena and Misawa, which host US Air Force F-15, F-35 and F-16 fighter squadrons. Iwakuni, meanwhile, remains home to Carrier Air Wing 5, whose squadrons do not always operate from aircraft carriers.

Guam also continues to serve as a platform for rotational B-52 and B-1 strategic bombers, as well as P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft. Added to this is the flotilla of nuclear-powered attack submarines based at Guam and Yokosuka, which operates independently of carrier strike groups and accounts for much of Washington’s less visible deterrence in the theatre.

The contribution of allies must not be overlooked either. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force fields destroyers and Kaga-class aircraft carriers already cleared to operate F-35B fighters, while South Korea and Australia maintain naval capabilities of their own in the region.

What is lost with the departure of the George Washington, however, is the large-scale, self-sustaining air-power projection that only an aircraft carrier can provide: more than 60 embarked aircraft, immediate availability anywhere in the theatre, and the symbolic value of the flagship. The Pacific is not left undefended, but it does lose its most versatile and conspicuous asset.

The pledge: Asia as the “priority theatre”

That symbolic importance is precisely what makes the ship’s departure significant when measured against what the Trump administration promised only a year earlier. During the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in May 2025, then newly appointed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth labelled the Indo-Pacific the United States’ priority theatre, arguing that the country had spent a generation distracted by endless wars and “costly distractions” unrelated to its vital interests. The message was unambiguous: under the new administration, military resources - and aircraft carriers in particular - were meant to be focused on containing China.

The quiet reordering

That commitment, however, did not remain intact in the formal documents that followed. The National Security Strategy (NSS), released in November 2025, set out a geographical order of priorities that did not place Asia first: the Western Hemisphere would lead the list, followed only afterwards by the Indo-Pacific, Europe and the Middle East. This reordering reflects the so-called “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, which asserts Washington’s exclusive pre-eminence over the Americas and has already been put into military practice through the naval deployment off Venezuela and in the Caribbean.

The practical outcome of that hierarchy became apparent even before any document was published: the fleet’s most sought-after naval assets ended up responding to the hemispheric priority and the ongoing war against Iran, rather than to the theatre that the Pentagon itself had identified as most important in competition with China.

Three deployments, one underserved region

The pattern can be traced through three concrete developments over the past year. USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) was diverted from its deployment in the European Command area of responsibility to the Caribbean as part of the US military build-up in response to Venezuela. USS Abraham Lincoln, meanwhile, accumulated a historic deployment - more than 250 consecutive days at sea, surpassing the previous record set by USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in 2020 - while sustaining the campaign against Iran in the Middle East. Now USS George Washington, the only aircraft carrier permanently assigned to Asia, is the vessel required to carry out that relief.

The structural backdrop worsens the situation. Of the eleven aircraft carriers in the US Navy, normally only two to three are deployed at the same time, while the fleet’s intensive use over the past year has already raised concerns among analysts over the mounting maintenance workload at the country’s only two shipyards capable of servicing this type of vessel. In this context, every extended deployment to one theatre necessarily reduces the presence in another.

A precedent already seen

The current gap is not without precedent. In August 2024, the Western Pacific faced a similar situation when USS Abraham Lincoln was reassigned to the Middle East, leaving the region without deployed US aircraft carriers for at least three weeks. The recurrence of this situation - this time involving the Japan-based forward-deployed vessel itself - indicates that it is not an isolated event but a structural fleet limitation that emerges whenever a conflict intensifies elsewhere.

Beijing’s reading

China did not overlook the coincidence. In the days immediately following the departure of the George Washington, the aircraft carrier Liaoning conducted exercises in the Yellow Sea, while Fujian was again deployed to the South China Sea, both at a time when the Western Pacific had no US aircraft carrier present.

The message to allies

Beyond the balance of forces, analysts specialising in US policy towards China - including the CATO Institute - agree that the carrier’s principal value in the region extends beyond its material capabilities into the psychological sphere: it acts as a guarantee of commitment to allies such as Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan. Even if temporary, its absence reinforces the perception that Washington is distracted by its Middle East and Western Hemisphere commitments, at a time when officials such as Admiral Frank Bradley are visiting Manila and Tokyo in an effort to uphold, through public statements, the United States’ commitment to the region.

Ultimately, the departure of USS George Washington does not in itself represent a decisive shift in the Indo-Pacific military balance: US infrastructure, land-based aviation and attack submarines remain operational, and the carrier’s absence could be reversed in the coming weeks if USS *Theodore Roosevelt* takes over the burden in the Middle East. What it does expose, however, is the gap between the “strategic priority” for Asia proclaimed by the Trump administration in 2025 and the actual allocation of its most valuable naval assets, which on three consecutive occasions - Venezuela, Iran and now this relief operation - has reduced capability in the very theatre declared to be the most important.