US Coast Guard Aims to Counter Chinese Naval Power

The USCGC Stratton, a Sentinel-class cutter, in transit in the Pacific Ocean (Flickr)

The United States Coast Guard, long associated with maritime security and search and rescue missions along U.S. coasts, is now being deployed thousands of miles away in the Pacific as part of a broader strategy to counter China’s growing naval power in the region. Since December 2020, the Coast Guard has sent two of its newest cutters to the U.S. territory of Guam, where they are now conducting enforcement and training operations with U.S. allies in the South Pacific.

The new move is in response to an increasingly assertive China, which has used its vast fishing fleet and its 130-ship coast guard—the largest in the world—to establish its presence in the Pacific. Chinese fishing fleets, having exhausted fisheries in the South China Sea, are now venturing further abroad, and the fish-rich seas of Pacific countries like Palau and Vanuatu are ripe targets. These fleets, often made of hundreds of fishing vessels, have been spotted as far east as the Galapagos Islands. They are sometimes escorted by armed Chinese warships, and they have in the past engaged in aggressive behavior such as ramming and sinking other states’ fishing vessels.

The Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing index ranks China as the worst country in the world for regularly engaging in overfishing, illegal intrusions, and targeting of endangered species. Concerned that Chinese fishing fleets are participating in illegal activity, Pacific countries have stepped up enforcement operations, including the recent seizure of two fishing vessels in Vanuatu for illegal fishing in February.

In October 2020, the Department of Defense announced it would deploy Sentinel-class Fast Response Cutters to the Pacific to counter China’s “destabilizing and malign” behavior. Since then, the cutters, which are equipped with heavy machine guns and patrol helicopters, have been assisting U.S. allies, boarding ships suspected of illegal fishing, and conducting document checks. The Coast Guard is also helping these countries train their own coast guards to protect their own territorial waters. 

The move comes amidst the Biden administration’s focus on countering a rising China. Although the U.S. Coast Guard is formally under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security, it has cooperated extensively with the Pentagon. Data obtained by the Wall Street Journal shows that the Coast Guard spent 326 days supporting the Pentagon in the Pacific in 2019, compared to an average of just 50 to 100 days in the years prior. Moreover, in another attempt to expand American presence in the South Pacific, the United States is currently considering Palau’s request for a U.S. naval base on its soil. 

Beyond law enforcement and training missions, the Coast Guard plans to be much more present in the Pacific Ocean; it is investing more than $19 billion into ships like the Sentinel-class cutters and is hoping to deploy at least eight of the eleven vessels to the Pacific, possibly stationing them in American Samoa. One Coast Guard cutter has also transited the Taiwan Strait in a Freedom of Navigation operation, which China strongly protests. 

For its part, China is empowering its own coast guard to take a greater role in asserting Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea. On January 22, the Chinese government passed a law allowing the Chinese Coast Guard to use “all necessary means,” including deadly force, against foreign ships that challenge Chinese maritime claims. Against the backdrop of greater military activity in the Pacific, analysts fear that such measures could further escalate disputes and lead to armed clashes in the South China Sea.