The U.S. Coast Guard is set to ramp up its activities with Indo-Pacific partners as it plans more combined operations at sea, including a pollution response exercise next year alongside the Japanese and Indian coast guards, the agency's regional chief said in an exclusive interview.
The trilateral drills will take place at Tokyo's request, USCG Pacific Area Commander Vice Adm. Andrew Tiongson told The Japan Times, noting that this and other regional, cooperative initiatives are the result of “near-continuous staff talks between the services."
“The U.S. and Japan continue to seek opportunities to deepen our services’ relationship through collaboration on combined operations and exercises, professional and academic exchanges, training, and capacity building,” Tiongson said, pointing to the 2022 Sapphire memorandum of cooperation as the basis for expanding the joint activities.
But the growing cooperation won’t be limited to other coast guards.
This month, for instance, the USCG will participate in a joint maritime assault exercise with the Maritime Self-Defense Force’s Special Boarding Unit, the Canadian Special Operation Forces, and U.S. Navy Special Warfare personnel as part of Exercise Keen Sword. During that exercise, the USCG and others will train in boarding, searching and seizing vessels.
No details were provided about other combined at-sea operations, but the vice admiral made it clear that there are currently “no planned group sails” near the disputed Senkaku Islands, which are administered by Japan but also claimed by China.
Tiongson’s remarks come at a time when a growing number of Indo-Pacific coast guards are becoming deeply involved in patrolling disputed waters.
Sovereignty over the Senkakus has for years been a major bone of contention between Tokyo and Beijing, with the China Coast Guard (CCG) now keeping an almost continuous maritime presence around the uninhabited islets.
This, in turn, has prompted Japan to boost its own coast guard capabilities.
The CCG, the world’s largest, has also been active around Taiwan, operating near Taiwanese-controlled Kinmen Island and also taking part in the Chinese military’s large-scale exercises on Oct. 14 by conducting what Beijing said were “law enforcement inspections” around the self-ruled island.
Beijing's activities around disputed waters with the Philippines in the South China Sea have also made international headlines, as the CCG has aimed to prevent resupply missions to isolated features, including to a garrison at Second Thomas Shoal.
Tiongson said that while the USCG has been “advising and assisting” Manila in these missions, it has not been asked to provide escorts in order “not to overly escalate the situation.”
Experts say the growing use of “gray-zone” tactics by some states make coast guards an important tool for nations to protect maritime resources without having to deploy their armed forces. As a result, coast guards have been playing a key role in the intensifying territorial and maritime disputes in the East and South China seas, with their vessels often used to either defend or promote territorial claims.
Tiongson hinted that the USCG, which has yet to experience any unprofessional encounters with the CCG, would defer to U.S. regional naval commanders on politically sensitive operations, saying that USCG cutters “primarily operate under the tactical control of DESRON (Destroyer Squadron) 15 when in the region, and leverage the same services provided to U.S. naval vessels.”
Tiongson made the remarks after he visited Japan late last month to, among other things, look for places from which the coast guard can routinely conduct forward operations. In particular, these are locations that can serve as logistics hubs, as the USCG looks to expand its Indo-Pacific footprint.
The commander stressed, however, that there are currently “no plans to homeport” USCG cutters in Japan.
The coast guard has frequented ports in Japan during routine visits and “plans to continue to do so, primarily within the U.S. Navy facilities enclave, for crew rest, refueling, replenishment, and professional engagements,” Tiongson said, noting that cutters “operate all across the region” and have visited various ports in Japan, including Yokosuka and Maizuru.
The USCG already has a large regional footprint, particularly in the Pacific Ocean, not just because of Hawaii and the U.S. territory of Guam, but also due to law enforcement pacts it has signed with several Pacific island nations. This includes the Shiprider program, which allows it to obtain a country’s consent to board and search vessels suspected of illicit activities in that nation’s exclusive economic zone.
Plans to use additional forward-deployment locations in Japan, and possibly also in Australia, are expected to further expand the USCG’s capacity to find “regional responses” to its growing list of challenges.
To achieve this, Tiongson said the law enforcement agency is also aiming to increase the size of its Pacific fleet.
“Three additional fast-response cutters are expected to be homeported in Guam in addition to an additional Indo-Pacific support cutter that will help assist partner nations with capacity building and combating illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in the region,” he said.
John Bradford, founder and executive director of the Yokosuka Council on Asia Pacific Studies, said that in doing so the U.S. is seeking to expand the use of its coast guard as an “element of statecraft in the Indo-Pacific.”
“Bringing ships to ports further west in the Indo-Pacific reduces the travel time to engagements, thus increasing the productivity of each ship and crew,” said Bradford, who is also a former country director for Japan at the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense.
“This is thus a practical step that enables the USCG to do more in the region while also serving as a powerful diplomatic tool to demonstrate commitment.”
However, he said there are still imperfections in the strategy, since the vessels, under the command of the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet while in the region, “essentially become naval assets and thus lose some of the ‘soft power edge’ that makes the law enforcement agency such a useful tool of maritime statecraft.”
This comes after the leaders of the U.S., India, Japan and Australia pledged last month to launch joint coast guard patrols to monitor vessels fishing illegally in the Indo-Pacific.
“The Quad” countries plan a joint operation next year that will see Japanese, Australian and Indian coast guard members board a USCG vessel in the region, with future missions expected to take place on a rotational basis.
The planned Quad-at-Sea Ship Observer Missions are widely seen as a check not only on illegal activities at sea, but also on Beijing’s increasingly assertive efforts to promote its territorial and maritime claims.
But very few details have emerged, including whether the missions will be held in disputed areas of the East and South China seas and how they would deal with Beijing’s massive fishing fleet that operates there.
Tiongson, who said that the new initiative would mark the first time coast guard officials from all four countries would conduct such joint operations, hinted that the patrols could take place in waters within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.
However, absent an agreement with coastal states such as Vietnam or the Philippines, Quad coast guards have no authority to enforce fishing regulations in the South China Sea.
Bradford said that while this makes a lot of sense in the high seas, “most of Asia's maritime crime hot spots are in waters where other nations have legal jurisdiction.”
This means that for the USCG to enforce maritime laws in these areas it would require authorization from the coastal states. But while such arrangements exist with Caribbean and South Pacific nations via the "shiprider agreements," no such deals are currently in place with Asian countries, he noted.
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