U.S. Weighs Carrier Exercise During Trump Trip to Asia

Trump’s coming visit to Asia is the longest that any U.S. president has taken to the region in more than two decades

In China, Mr. Trump will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping to seek greater Chinese pressure on North Korea and to “rebalance the U.S.-China economic relations,” the official said. 

The three U.S. aircraft carriers are scheduled to travel near the Korean Peninsula soon, and the military may decide to keep them in the area for maneuvers that would coincide with President Donald Trump’s coming visit to Asia, U.S. defense officials said.

It would be the first military exercise involving three U.S. carriers in the area since 2007, officials said, sending a potent message to North Korea at a time of rising tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear-weapons program.

Tensions in the region are already heightened. North Korea warned on Monday that the U.S. is “pushing the situation to the point of the worst explosion by massively amassing ultramodern, nuclear-war hardware of all varieties in and around the Korean Peninsula.”

Mr. Trump leaves at the end of the week for a two-week trip that will take him to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. White House officials say the trip is the longest that any U.S. president has taken to the region in more than two decades.

Much of the trip will revolve around the threat posed by North Korea. Mr. Trump will call on the international community to maximize pressure on North Korea during a speech to the South Korean legislature, although he won’t visit the demilitarized zone because of time constraints, a senior administration official said.

The USS Ronald Reagan, based in Japan, just completed a visit to South Korea. The USS Nimitz, which deployed to the Persian Gulf on June 1, is currently conducting a port visit in Sri Lanka and will travel through the Pacific on its way back to its home port on the U.S. West Coast.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt will replace the Nimitz in the Middle East and currently is en route. It left its home port in San Diego on Oct. 6, and, like the Nimitz, must travel through the region to reach the Middle East. The USS Theodore Roosevelt is currently near Guam.

The last time three carrier groups were in the region because of scheduling was in 2011, officials said.

The officials said that while the convergence of the ships wasn’t timed to Mr. Trump’s visit to Asia, which begins this weekend, they are considering “taking advantage of the opportunity” and scheduling an exercise.

U.S. defense officials said a decision on whether to conduct an exercise would likely be made at “the last minute.”

Military officials acknowledge that it is rare to have three of the U.S.’s 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in one region of the world at the same time, but should not be taken as a sign of an impending military confrontation.

“It’s not that it’s a pure coincidence, but it doesn’t mean that we’re about to attack,” one official said.

With many of the prescheduled moves already being planned, officials have acknowledged seeing “a unique opportunity” to flex the U.S. military’s muscle at a time of heightened tensions.

“I wouldn’t read anything more to it than it’s just an opportunity to exercise three carrier strike groups together,” Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr. said last week. “It does demonstrate a unique and powerful capability that has a very significant assurance effect on our allies in the Western Pacific.”

Pyongyang warned on Monday that it was keeping a close eye on the influx of U.S. military assets.

“The U.S. military action getting all the more hysteric compels the DPRK to take action,” it added, using the acronym for its formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The influx of U.S. military assets also comes amid a debate in Seoul about bringing U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea for the first time since former President George H.W. Bush withdrew them in the early 1990s.

Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that there were no plans to return nuclear weapons to South Korea, citing the U.S.’s existing capabilities and a desire to remove nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula.