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A US Coast Guard vessel partakes in a joint operation with the US Navy. (USCG website)

How far does the operational scope of the US Coast Guard (USCG) extend?

It has been revealed that USCG vessels have been travelling across the Pacific Ocean to as far as the East China Sea for purposes of “naval support.” In an Apr. 20 report, the Washington Post cited USCG officials as saying the USCG cutter Bertholf had sailed to the East China Sea in March while Chinese vessels “shadowed it on the high seas.”

“It was a reminder to the Americans of where they were: in a strategic area a couple hundred miles from China’s shores,” the report continued.

The USCG makes up one of the five arms of the US federal armed forces alongside the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, although it is affiliated with the Department of Homeland Security instead of the Department of Defense. But the Bertholf is under the command of the Navy’s 7th Fleet, which has jurisdiction in the Asia-Pacific region. Last month, it passed through the Taiwan Strait with a Navy destroyer; on Apr. 15, it docked at Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China.

The expansion in the operational range of the USCG – which ordinarily operates along the coast of the mainland US – illustrates the “evolving US response” to China’s expansion, the Washington Post said. The USCG is extending its operational scope increasingly in China’s direction, deploying new warships and repositioning its existing ones, and providing support for military exercises by China’s neighbors such as Vietnam and Sri Lanka. Adm. Karl Schultz, the USCG commandant, explained that naval forces were becoming “oversubscribed” as the Defense Department shifts its focus toward containing Russia and China.

A US Coast Guard speedboat (Wikimedia Commons)

“The Coast Guard brings some capacity to that [deployment] equation,” he explained. As bases for this, he pointed to “realities in the South China Sea” and the negative impact on military strength following two separate collisions in 2017 involving two Navy destroyers and private vessels in the Singapore Strait and near Japan.

At the same time, Schultz said the USCG exercises its operational authority “below the threshold of war.”

“We’re US warships, but we look different, with a white hull and an orange stripe,” he noted.

Vice Adm. Linda Fagan, who commands USCG operations in the East China Sea, said the US Coast Guard communicated to the Pentagon that it did not want the Bertholf used “solely like a combatant” while operating under Navy control.

By Cho Il-joon, staff reporter

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