U.S. Deploys Coast Guard Far From Home to Counter China – WSJ

Early last December, the crew of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Myrtle Hazard sailed through the night, anchored off the Pacific island nation of Palau and boarded a group of Chinese boats to help seize tens of thousands of dollars worth of sea cucumber that had allegedly been harvested illegally.

The fast-response cutter, operating around 6,600 miles from the continental U.S. and roughly 750 miles from its home port in the U.S. territory of Guam, is part of the Coast Guard s newest growth area: helping counter China s growing naval power in the Pacific.

China has used coordinated action by its fishing fleets, coast guard and navy to establish its presence in the South China Sea. It increasingly also has a presence in the South and Central Pacific. Chinese fishing fleets have shown up in force around island nations like the Republic of Kiribati and Tuvalu, which have some of the richest tuna fisheries in the world, and China s navy has established itself in the area as well, including with a stopover by warships in Sydney in 2019 and visits by a naval hospital ship to Fiji in 2018.

The U.S. Coast Guard is building up in the region in response. In the past few months, it based two of its most advanced new cutters in the U.S. territory of Guam, nearly 4,000 miles closer to Shanghai than it is to San Francisco. One more is due to arrive in the coming months. For the first time, the Coast Guard has an attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Canberra, Australia, and another attaché will move to Singapore next year.

via www.wsj.com