AMERICA LEAVES THE PACIFIC OPEN TO CHINA
No American aircraft carrier is covering the Western Pacific. A US destroyer drifted four days in the South China Sea last month and the Navy said nothing for three weeks. Beijing spent the gap making friends.
The United States has no aircraft carrier in the Western Pacific. The Abraham Lincoln and the George H.W. Bush both sit in the Arabian Sea, fighting Trump's war with Iran. The George Washington — the carrier based in Japan, the one whose job is the Pacific — went the other way, transiting the Singapore Strait westbound on August 13 to relieve the Lincoln, which has been at sea more than 266 days without a single port call.
What is left in the Western Pacific: one small combat ship in the South China Sea, two more tied up at Singapore, one amphibious ship at Sasebo.
Then there is the Benfold. On July 24 the destroyer's generators failed and she drifted for four days in the South China Sea. The crew went without working toilets, without a galley, without drinking water, without air conditioning. Another American warship brought them meals. Contractor tugs — not the Navy — met her on July 28 and towed her to the Philippines, and power came back on the 30th. Nobody was hurt. The Navy told nobody for 24 days, and only confirmed it after the Naval Institute published the story on August 14.
