For subscribers
Coast guard versus coast guard in the South China Sea
When coast guards begin to act like navies, it raises the risk of armed conflict in contested waters.
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
A Japanese Coast Guard vessel in a trilateral exercise with the Philippines and the US off the coast of the Bataan peninsula.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
Follow topic:
On June 6, the Philippines participated in a trilateral exercise with Japan and the United States
Most significantly, the participating personnel were not from the three countries’ navies, but from their coast guards. The coast guard is traditionally a law enforcement agency, an extension of the police into a coastal country’s maritime territory. Increasingly, however, South-east Asia is seeing coast guards conducting foreign policy, looking and acting more like national military forces than police.
