Small warships are useful for low-intensity conflict but Red Sea conflict shows that they need more defense and offense.
The Houthis have mostly been using drones which don't work well against ships. But they have used a few Iranian anti-ship missiles.
The Eisenhower withdrew in June and Roosevelt arrived in July.
Shipbuilding deeply tied into the US military's goals.
The carrier group could have stayed in position and inflicted enormous damage in retaliation, but no one wants nukes used
The dominant power in an era has always used that intimidation performed via the implication of violence to force everyone into the boundaries of the agreed upon terms.
The goal would be in the end transitioning away from tools of war to tools of enforcement. The issue is that the overlap between the two is vast and repurposing the latter for the former is very easy. Which brings things full circle when the diplomacy required for enforcement fails and intimidation has to be used. There is a time for one and a time for the other, but we as a species are really bad at transitioning because being the intimidator is incredibly advantageous and thus very alluring for the leading party responsible for enforcement. The only ways to stop it are for another party to exceed the limits of the enforcement too quickly to react to (what the U.S. did to the British), marathoning an expansion of violent capabilities (what the U.S. did to the USSR and what China's currently doing to the U.S.), or factions within the dominant party starving the faction responsible for enforcement before said faction turns to war (the only time I can think of this happening being Luxembourg to Prussia). As we can see from the article the most common tactic is the second.