Peter Suciu
Following the October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas in southern Israel, the US Navy has rotated several of its nuclear-powered supercarriers to the Middle East. The warships have sought to deter further escalation from Iran and its regional proxies, while the Pentagon carried out a bombing campaign against the Tehran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen.
Hamas and Hezbollah have each been significantly weakened in their de facto wars with Israel, while the United States reached a fragile ceasefire with the Houthis in early May. It appears that Washington has achieved its objectives in the Middle East,
which raises fresh questions regarding whether the US Navy should maintain any carriers in the region. Yet, as of last week, both the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) and the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) were operating in the Red Sea, while the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) is expected to reach the eastern Mediterranean in the coming weeks.
Continued US carrier buildup in the region is unnecessary, argued Dov S. Zakheim, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). In an op-ed for The Hill, Zakheim warned that such a carrier buildup risks drawing the United States into another conflict in the Middle East, when efforts should be directed towards “the Western Pacific to confront the increasingly potent and sophisticated Chinese threat.”
Zakheim further noted that history is repeating itself, with policies similar to those of the early 1990s, when the United States failed to “disentangle itself” from the region.
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