The U.S. deploys the Coast Guard away from home to counter China

China has used the coordinated action of its fishing fleets, coastguard and navy to establish its presence in the South China Sea. It has an increasing presence in the South and Central Pacific. Chinese fishing fleets have sprung up around island nations such as the Republic of Kiribati and Tuvalu, which have some of the richest tuna fisheries in the world, and the Chinese navy has also established itself in the area, including the stopover. of warships in Sydney in 2019 and visits from a naval hospital ship in Fiji in 2018.

In response, the U.S. Coast Guard is accumulating in the region. In recent months, it has established two of its most advanced new cutters in the U.S. territory of Guam, nearly 4,000 miles closer to Shanghai than to San Francisco. One more will come in the coming months. For the first time, the Coast Guard has an attaché at the U.S. embassy in Canberra, Australia, and another attache will move to Singapore next year.

The Coast Guard has been steadily increasing its activity in the western Pacific and near the coasts of China. In 2019 he deployed cutters in the western Pacific for more than ten months to work with the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet. One, the USCGC Bertholf, traveled through the Taiwan Strait in a show of defiance to China, the first U.S. Coast Guard ship to make the voyage highly politicized.

“All of that changed with the National Defense Strategy,” Lyle Morris, a senior policy analyst at Rand Corp., referred to a 2018 Pentagon paper. “The biggest transition has been the Coast Guard’s more open signaling about its role in the great power competition with China.”

Although the U.S. Coast Guard depends on the Department of Homeland Security, its work with the Pentagon is growing. U.S. government data show that Coast Guard ships spent 326 days supporting the Department of Defense in 2019, compared to an average of only 50 to 100 days over the previous five years. All 2019 deployments were made in the Indian-Pacific. The Coast Guard mission has traditionally focused on protecting the U.S. maritime borders, but has sometimes played a supporting role in the Navy.

The Department of Defense has also noted the need to focus more on the region. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s first trip abroad, which began this week, takes him to the Indo-Pacific.

The United States and its allies with a strong naval presence in the Pacific, such as Australia and France, are concerned that China, having established a strong presence in the South China Sea, is moving further to find areas less depleted fishing and expand their position strategy. Coast Guard deployments are designed to allow the U.S. to deal with probes with less risk of military incident than if U.S. Navy ships were involved.

“Sending the Coast Guard to the region to train our partners makes perfect sense,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D., Mass.), A member of the House Armed Services Committee. “They can do all this without the risk of complications that the Navy would incur in doing the same job.”

Much of the work is a control activity on the front of the Chinese probes, their fishing fleet. In the Republic of Palau, the Chinese fishing boat and six smaller boats had been arrested for allegations of sea cucumber. The Coast Guard came to help local authorities with boarding and documentary checks.

Palau, like the Pacific nations, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands, is in a free association pact with the United States, which allows them to remain independent while reaping some of the benefits offered by the American territories.

While many of the small Pacific islands have a growing capacity to protect their own waters, new Coast Guard ships have increased U.S. capacity to provide security and stability, said Captain Christopher Chase, commander of the Coast Guard in the Guam region.

The Coast Guard is investing more than $ 19 billion in at least eight national security cutters, 25 offshore patrol cutters and 58 quick response cutters. If all goes according to plan this year, at least eight of those ships will be deployed in a position to counter China. The Coast Guard is also investigating the parking of a boat in American Samoa.

The new national security cutters, the centerpiece of the fleet, can travel farther and faster in worse conditions. They are armed with a system of naval weapons and heavy machine guns and have decks where helicopters can land.

The force will also work with the Pacific and Southeast Asian nations on more mundane but relationship-building tasks, such as repairing ships, training crews and replacing sailing buoys.

China has used its own coast guard, the largest in the world, to accompany its fishing fleet and harass vessels engaged in oil exploration and other commercial activities in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

In the summer of 2019, USCGC Bertholf docked in Manila, Philippines, after drills with local counterparts.

Cmdr. Gary Gimotea was skipper of a 184-foot Coast Guard boat involved in search and rescue training with the Americans about 70 nautical miles from the disputed Scarborough Bank. A Chinese ship overshadowed them all day.

“They become more aggressive and challenge you as you approach Scarborough Shoal,” the commander said. Gimotea said of the Chinese ships that are often patrolled. “It’s very reassuring to have the US when we do these exercises.”

Vice Admiral Linda Fagan, commander of the U.S. Coast Guard in the Pacific, said the Indo-Pacific command and countries in the region would like to have a more regular Coast Guard presence in the South China Sea area and that strength would seem to return opportunities.

“Being a little smaller than the U.S. Navy and certainly a little more agile and flexible is positive for our partners,” Vice Admiral Fagan said in an interview.

Write to Lucy Craymer to [email protected] and Ben Kesling to [email protected]