Coast Guards Become Tools of Asian Maritime Control

Coast guard vessels increasingly operate alongside navy units in the First Island Chain, turning forces presented as law enforcement into potential military resources in contested waters. The buildup raises the risk of incidents and accidents, while ships on either side could become legitimate military targets, Emanuele Scimia writes.

Who Controls the Waterways

Near-daily incursions by Chinese assets and counter-maneuvers by Taiwanese, Philippine and Japanese forces now define a battle for maritime presence, with mounting US support. The contest no longer resembles the US Coast Guard’s Vietnam War patrols aimed at stopping North Vietnamese weapons smuggling in shallow coastal waters. The white hulls now form part of a widening apparatus of state power.

The China Coast Guard has expanded maritime enforcement control and used what the article calls “gray zone” tactics, primarily around Taiwan and in the South China Sea. Those operations have coincided with significant, coordinated naval exercises alongside the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy. Coast guard operations and naval exercises move together. The boundary between enforcement and military pressure grows harder to see.

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War says the combined naval and coast guard movements serve as a live dress rehearsal aimed at isolating Taiwan and the Philippines from foreign intervention and establishing total control over strategic waterways leading into the wider Pacific Ocean. That’s the institution’s assessment. It describes a contest over who gets to move through waters with strategic importance.

A Counter-Front Takes Shape

The US and allied coast guards have accelerated coordinated “gray zone” and deterrence operations in response to Chinese naval, coast guard and maritime militia maneuvers. Their methods include interagency integration, joint shadowing and collaborative law enforcement exercises—not only traditional military responses.

The US, Japan, Australia and the Philippines operate collectively under an informal defense framework known as the “Squad.” Taiwan is increasingly linked through discreet parallel channels, newly built maritime assets and strategic planning. Across East and Southeast Asia, overlapping multilateral alliances are organized to counter Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific.

India is adding to the traffic. The Indian Coast Guard offshore patrol vessel Shaunak sailed last month from Chennai to Perth. New Delhi keeps a low profile on territorial disputes in the China Seas and the Taiwan Strait, while sharing maritime awareness data with Washington, Tokyo, Canberra and Manila under the Quad framework. The Indian Coast Guard is also multiplying voyages alongside its Quadrilateral Security Dialogue partners: the US, Japan and Australia.

Escalation Without a Civilian View

Scimia writes that Beijing might interpret increased US Coast Guard deployments as a sign of weakness caused by a navy overstretched by Middle Eastern commitments, rather than as a symmetrical response to Chinese hybrid warfare. He says cooperation between US and allied coast guards is reinforcing maritime awareness and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance activities while cementing an anti-China front. He also points to concerns about US President Donald Trump's aversion to Washington's system of alliances in the Indo-Pacific.

Scimia says any coast guard “defusing effect” is about to vanish from the Indo-Pacific chessboard. Along the disputed Himalayan border, China and India engage in tit-for-tat action; India uses specialized border guards to counter Chinese military presence and deviations in patrolling. “The trend is clear: 'gray zone' operations by Beijing trigger 'gray zone' responses from adversaries, on and land and at sea,” he writes.

The account names no community-led response, mutual-aid effort or civilian voice. It does identify the people operating in waters where larger, better-armed coast guard vessels increasingly function as naval resources, and where accidents or incidents could draw opposing forces into confrontation. The strategic plans belong to governments and security institutions. The reported danger sits in the shared waters they’re contesting.