The Naval Destroyer USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. sailed to its home port of Pearl Harbor late September, following an extraordinary ten-month deployment to the Middle East.
The ship was part of the aircraft carrier strike group with the USS Abraham Lincoln, whose extended deployment ended in August and is currently at sea, en route to San Diego.
The ship that replaced the Abraham Lincoln was the USS George Washington, whose home port is Yokosuka, Japan.
What that means is that the Asia Pacific currently does not have a U.S. aircraft carrier in the region — how important is that, and what sort of signal does it send?
To learn more, HPR spoke with retired Brig. Gen. David Stilwell, a 35-year Air Force veteran and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in the first Trump Administration.
And while he says that the situation in the Asia Pacific is not ideal, it's also not as significant as some critics are saying.
Interview Highlights
On removing the U.S. Navy's presence in the Pacific
DAVID STILWELL: The demand grows unexpectedly, and as we saw with the Persian Gulf and the Iran issue, that there was more a need for more activity and more carrier coverage, and so it's not the first time we've deployed carriers out of the Pacific to go support, unfortunately, the Middle East, sometimes Europe. So the news reports saying this is a once in a lifetime or it's never happened before are not accurate. There have been carrier gaps many, many times in the past, which is why when you read these stories, you should, you know, do some research and see if that's really true.
On messaging to military allies
STILWELL: I keep pointing back to Steve Myron, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers' speech last year, where he said the U.S. is done providing global public goods — as in free and open Pacific — by itself. We need help. We can't do it all by ourselves anymore. So we're insisting that NATO step up and start covering Europe because we can't do that and the Pacific and the Middle East, and then we've got others, great allies like Japan, who are doing it just because it makes sense because the threat is growing and they have to respond. Yes, they love to depend on us, but they also realize they've got their role to play as well.
On Hawaiʻi’s strategic military location
STILWELL: The question is, how much are the Hawaiian citizens willing to accept in terms of military footprint and all that goes with that? You know, hosting the military, as we see in Okinawa, can be onerous. It brings a lot of investment and funding, but it also brings people who don't live here or aren't familiar with Hawaiʻi, but the focus of the PRC on Hawaiʻi is unmistakable. … It figures very prominently in the mind of the PRC. Clearly, investment is required. Its forward position in the Pacific is very important, as is Guam.
This story aired on The Conversation on Oct. 2, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
