Global Courant
This month, the coast guards of Japan, the Philippines and the United States held their first-ever excercisetwo weeks after the United States and Japan delivered joint training in the Philippines.
In another precedent-setting first-ever event, senior leaders from nine Indo-Pacific Coast Guards gathered at the International Maritime Security Conference (IMSC) in Singapore to discuss their priorities for future collaboration.
These are just two examples of an increase in Coast Guard cooperation aimed at promoting maritime governance and maintaining maritime order in the face of increasing complex maritime challenges.
The IMSC consistently attracts Navy chiefs from around the world, but this was the first time the event had included such a large Coast Guard representation. The IMSC even included a special panel headed by Vice Admiral Dr. A’an Kurnia, Chief of Bakamla (the de facto Indonesian Coast Guard) and Vice Admiral Roland Lizor N Punzalan Jr, Deputy Operations Commander of the Philippine Coast Guard.
Vice Admiral Kurnia of the Indonesian Maritime Security Agency (Bakamla) and Vice Admiral Punzalan of the Philippine Coast Guard take the stage at the International Maritime Security Conference on May 4, 2023. Photo: Philippine Coast Guard
This is just the latest in a series of meetings that mark the rise of Coast Guard dialogue in the region. Since 2004, Coast Guard leaders have gathered for the Asian Coast Guard Main Meetingsand a broader Coast Guard Global Summit was established in 2017. In 2022, Indonesia hosted the ASEAN Coast Guard Foruma body it hopes to institutionalize this year.
These meetings enable senior leaders to share perspectives and cohesive insights of the complex and complex subject matter interrelated maritime threats the region is facing. They also enable leaders to find opportunities for tangible collaboration and combined operations.
Budding relationships
In the Indo-Pacific, the most advanced maritime law enforcement cooperative relationship is between the United States Coast Guard (USCG) and the Japanese Coast Guard (JCG).
In 2022 she updated their partnership to the “Solid Alliance for Peace and Prosperity with Humanity and Integrity on the Rule-of-Law Based Engagement” (SAPPHIRE). This expanded collaboration focuses on standard operating procedures for combined operations, training, capacity building and information sharing.
The USCG and JCG are now conducting advanced exercises together in Japanese waters, where they have practiced banning simulated foreign ships operate illegally in Japanese waters. The JCG also with success involved in joint counter-narcotics operations around Guam and helped rescue a stray freediver off the coast of Hawaii. It trained with the Philippine Coast Guard and set the stage for the just led trilateral exercise.
Members of the Philippine Coast Guard wave U.S., Japanese, and Philippine flags during welcome ceremonies for Japanese and U.S. Coast Guard vessels docking in the southern port of Manila, June 1, 2023. Jeoffrey Maitem/BenarNews
Indo-Pacific Coast Guards and maritime law enforcement agencies are taking additional steps to improve their cooperation.
Japan has led the way by fostering relations with a range of partners. For example, Japan signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Philippines in 2016 that allows for joint anti-piracy activities around Tawi-Tawi and has a long-standing MoU with India that supports the annual exercise Sahyog Kaijin.
India, for its part, has other MoUs with the coastguards of Bangladesh, South Korea and Vietnam, and it is organizing the international coastguard exercise Dosti with Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
The United States sponsors the Southeast Asian Maritime Law Enforcement Initiative, an annual leadership forum designed to enhance regional stability by promoting maritime safety, security cooperation, coordination, and information sharing.
Agencies performing similar functions but focusing more on the coast, such as the Australian Border Force, are increasingly working with coastguards further afield.
Cooperation among Southeast Asian coastguards is also increasing and they are increasingly working together to improve their efficiency and effectiveness. The Memorandum of Understanding between the Vietnam Coast Guard and Bakamla has evolved into a statement of intent to step up operational cooperation between the two forces, while the VCG also maintains an MoU with Cambodia’s National Maritime Security Committee.
A proposed tripartite coastguard agreement would also see coordinated patrols in the Sulu and Celebes Sea between the PCG, Bakamla and Malaysia’s Maritime Enforcement Agency.
There is also increasing cooperation between coast guards and navies. Perhaps the best example of this is SEACAT. Sponsored by the United States since 2002, this multilateral naval exercise involves elements of the Coast Guard since 2016. In 2022, seven coastguards participated, as well as several navies with police functions.
Similarly, several coast guards have sent international liaison officers to the naval-focused Information Fusion Center in Singapore, with the most recent addition being the Republic of Korea Coast Guard officer, who arrived in April.
Drivers and results of cooperation
This growing collaboration is driven by three overarching trends.
Have perceived threats in the region evolved to become more complex. Criminals use regional routes to boost the global circulation of illicit goods, including drugs, across borders, while others seek to capitalize on targeting this circulation directly through piracy and armed robbery at sea. Oceans and seas have become of particular importance for regional development, making their resilience and protection particularly important. For example, the ASEAN Leaders’ Declaration on the Blue Economy explains that “the ocean and seas are key drivers of economic growth and innovation”. With the intention of strengthening their maritime governance – particularly in improving maritime safety, protecting the marine environment and enforcing maritime law – regional countries are paying more attention to creating and expanding their coast guards to improve the police effectiveness of the naval forces.
Cooperation between coast guards and other agencies and other advances in regional maritime security have paid off. For example, the Sulu Sea was a prime hunting ground for terrorists and other criminals, but no abductions have taken place there since 2020.
Sea robberies remain a problem in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, but instead of hijackings, incidents now amount to petty theft.
More needs to be done. While some interstate border disputes have stabilizedTensions are escalating around the South China and East China Seas.
As tools of statesmanship deployed to manage geopolitical tensions, coast guards were originally observed as less provocative than navies, but they are increasingly at the forefront of worrisome international competitions. As geopolitical tensions rise and interstate disputes sharpening at sea, bringing together a broader group of Coast Guard leaders is and will become increasingly important.
Some issues considered to be the realm of law enforcement are now intertwined with missions where national governments try to assert their sovereignty in maritime areas at the expense of other claimants.
In 2013, several Chinese maritime agencies were merged into the China Coast Guard (CCG). This force – the world’s largest coastguard by fleet size and the one with the heaviest weapons – was placed under the command of the Central Military Commission in 2021.
Cutter 3901 of the Chinese Coast Guard, the largest in the world. Photo: China Daily
Since then, China has opted to deploy this coast guard alongside a state-backed maritime militia in disputed waters in the East and South China Seas. This Coast Guard has been assigned missions more to exercise control and demonstrate sovereignty than to ensure good order at sea.
China’s neighbors have felt the need to respond in kind, and their fleets have expanded rapidly and their operational pace has increased, particularly in Japan and the Philippines.
The number of incidents is rising. For example, in February the PCG accused a CCG ship of using a military-grade laser to dazzle the crew of the PCG vessel, BRP Malapascua. The same PCG vessel also nearly collided with a much larger CCG vessel during unsafe maneuvers that captured on video in April.
There is an increasing risk of lives being lost or interactions escalating into a crisis. Dialogue and diplomacy therefore become necessary to reduce tensions and develop the necessary crisis management mechanisms.
Unfortunately, the CCG is conspicuously absent from most of these collaborative conversations. The leaders have attended some of the senior dialogues in the past, but have gone missing in recent years. Their seats were vacant at the 2022 Coast Guard Global Summit and HACGM meetings. They were also absent from last week’s IMSC.
The lack of cooperation between the CCG and the Southeast Asian Coast Guard demonstrates a worrying shortcoming. That the only significant new cooperative arrangement of the CCG in recent years is one signed with Russia is unlikely to reassure many in the Indo-Pacific.
Dialogue between coastguards and the cooperation it promotes becomes increasingly important as their role expands, but there are gaps. Countries should continue to provide opportunities to build those relationships, and there should be more coastguards to find the solutions needed to make the seas safer for everyone stakeholders.
John Bradford is a senior fellow in the Maritime Security Program at S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS); Scott Edwards is a Free & Open Indo-Pacific Fellow at the Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies (YCAPS).
This article was originally published by Pacific Forum. Global Courant republishes it with permission.
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