Security

Simi Valley, Ca.: China said it was closely monitoring Wednesday’s meeting between Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and U.S. House of Representative Speaker Kevin McCarthy and threatened unspecified retaliation. Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said it had detected a Chinese aircraft carrier group near the island’s southeast coast and that it was conducting training exercises. But the Pentagon said China’s overall military posture “has not changed.”

Ukraine: Kyiv’s Interior Ministry is training 40,000 irregular forces — known as Storm Brigades — to fight in a spring offensive against invading Russian troops. The Brigades have names like Hurricane, Spartan, and Rage and will buttress Ukraine’s regular army, which has received NATO training and a fresh inflow of Western tanks.

Mexico City: President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador penned a letter to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, asking for help curbing the flow of chemicals into Mexico that are fueling the U.S. fentanyl trade. Lopez Obrador complained in his missive about the “rude” American pressure on his government and blamed the drug crisis on the U.S.’s “loss of values.”

The U.S. Coast Guard redefines ‘U.S. coast’

THE NEWS

The Coast Guard is going to be spending a lot more time away from American shores.

The Biden administration is planning to aggressively deploy the service far beyond U.S. waters help contain threats posed by Russia and China. Senior Pentagon and Coast Guard officials have outlined in recent weeks an ambitious program to use the Guard’s “white hull” fleet on missions ranging from better policing the Arctic against Russian intrusions to helping island nations in the Pacific shore up the defenses of their maritime borders.

Coast Guard cutters are also deploying in international waters to guard against illegal Chinese fishing, which is impacting countries such as the Philippines and Ecuador.

The Coast Guard formally operates under the Department of Homeland Security during peacetime. But it closely coordinates its activities with the Pentagon to support the Navy and Air Force by conducting search-and-rescue, law enforcement, and humanitarian missions across the globe. The service frequently plays a role in foreign disaster relief efforts, for instance.

Defense officials have said the Coast Guard’s mix of policing and humanitarian capabilities makes it unique among the U.S. national security agencies, and is ideal for missions that involve diplomacy with smaller, developing nations.

“In many cases, the Coast Guard is absolutely the right force to deploy,” the commander of U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific, Admiral John Aquilino, said in a speech last month. “You’re going to see more Coast Guard in the Pacific.”

In recent weeks, the Coast Guard’s commandant, Admiral Linda Fagan, said she deployed ships in the waters off Antarctica to push back against Russia’s naval presence. Fagan, who last year became the first woman to lead a branch of the U.S.’s armed services, said the Kremlin isn’t accustomed to seeing American vessels so far north — a region increasingly at the center of international competition.

“The way you protect your sovereignty is through presence,” Fagan said Tuesday in Washington, noting that the U.S. is an Arctic nation. “We definitely caught the attention of the Russians.”

JAY’S VIEW

The Coast Guard’s growing international role is partly a reflection of how American competition with Russia and China is playing out in ever-more far-flung parts of the globe, and often involves missions where it would be too expensive and aggressive to send naval ships. While the war in Ukraine and politics surrounding Taiwan generate the headlines, critical conflicts are also quietly unfolding in Antarctica’s frigid waters and the Indo-Pacific’s remote archipelagos.

In recent months, the Biden administration expanded its diplomatic presence in countries like the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and Tonga to compete with China’s influence there. The Navy and Coast Guard are seeking to help these countries secure their maritime borders. The U.S. is also attempting to crack down on China’s prolific fishing operations – which Washington alleges is often illegal – with the help of other nations’ coast guards.

That has turned the waters surrounding the Galapagos Islands off Ecuador into an unlikely flash point in the rivalry between Washington and Beijing. There the Coast Guard has been policing against illegal fishing under the flag of the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization. Massive Chinese fleets that fish marlin and squid are the primary culprits of illegal commerce in the area, according to U.S. officials.

Last summer, a heavily armed Coast Guard cutter, the James, sought to inspect Chinese fishing vessels near the Galapagos. According to an Associated Press report, three of the Chinese ships sped away, and one appeared to try and ram the American vessel. The Chinese Foreign Ministry sent a demarche to the U.S. embassy in Beijing complaining about the incident, claiming the Americans acted illegally.

The Coast Guard’s smaller ships and crews could also help bring down the Defense Department’s overall costs as it expands into the Indo-Pacific. The Navy’s smallest patrol vessel costs $500 million to build and $50 to $70 million per year to operate. The Coast Guard, in contrast, is currently seeking $400 million to purchase four Fast Response Cutters, which have been used to conduct long-range patrols out of Hawaii and Guam and help police international fishing waters and Exclusive Economic Zones.

The boats will “further the Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States through expanded presence and engagement to promote a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the Coast Guard wrote in its funding request.

THE VIEW FROM BEIJING

Beijing has been closely tracking American moves in the Indo-Pacific, including the Coast Guard’s, and says they’re part of a concerted effort by the U.S. and its allies to encircle and weaken China. Chinese leaders and state media have argued the U.S. wasn’t interested in its relations with Pacific-island countries until they noticed China’s economic, diplomatic, and military presence there. U.S. allegations of illegal fishing, these officials and state media say, are just a cover for expanding U.S. military operations.

“Some U.S. officials said they do not ask Pacific-island nations to take sides between China and the U.S. and relevant cooperation doesn’t target China,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, last year. “We hope the U.S. can do what it says.”

NOTABLE

• The Coast Guard’s policy chief said in a recent interview that the service is tripling its overall deployments in the Western Pacific.
• China’s fishing operations in the Galapagos Islands fit into Beijing’s broader commercial strategy.

⋉ Advance: Finland In. Finland became the 31st member of NATO on Tuesday, in another Western step to push back against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine last year. Now it’s time to see if Sweden’s bid can make it past Hungary’s and Turkey’s opposition.

⋊ Retreat: …Wagner Out. The Kremlin is seeking to develop alternative militias to ultimately replace the Wagner Group paramilitary force in Ukraine, the U.K.’s Defense intelligence agency concluded. Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has been feuding with Russia’s Defense Ministry and the British believe Russian President Vladimir Putin wants a new command that his government has “more control over.”

The U.S. and Europe are fearful that Russia and China are beating the West in the global messaging battle over Ukraine, particularly outside Europe. I reached out to Brett Bruen, who was director for global engagement in President Barack Obama’s White House, to get his view on the information wars.

Six U.S. service members suffered traumatic brain injuries as a result of suspected kamikaze drone attacks by Iranian-backed militias in Syria last month. But the Pentagon said the number could grow.

Bashar al Assad: Syria’s President is emerging from diplomatic isolation, despite waging a war against his political opponents that’s contributed to the deaths of around 500,000 people since 2011, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The dictator has visited the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Russia in recent months. Saudi Arabia is considering welcoming Damascus back into the Arab League.

But Assad’s regime is still desperate for cash. And the U.S. and British governments believe they’ve uncovered the source of one of Damascus’s primary revenue streams — narcotics. Last week, the U.S. Treasury announced it had amassed intelligence showing that Assad’s government has generated billions from the production and trafficking of Captagon, an amphetamine-type stimulant. The drugs are moved from Syria into Europe via Lebanon and other Middle East countries.

The operation is apparently a family affair. Treasury sanctioned two of Assad’s cousins and a key lieutenant to the president’s brother for allegedly dealing Captagon. In 2020, Italian police seized 84 million pills in Salerno, which were allegedly produced at a factory owned by Samer al Assad, according to the U.S. (The cache was estimated to be worth $1.2 billion). Wissam al Assad, who runs a paramilitary unit in Syria, is also allegedly a key player in these trafficking operations.

The Syrian regime has denied any role in the drug trade and says it’s waging its own campaign against narcotics.

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— Jay