An increased role for the service may be seen as less politically sensitive but any cooperation with Taiwan risks a response from Beijing
The United States is leaning on its coastguard to reinforce its presence in the western Pacific as its navy comes under increasing strain in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, the US embassy in Manila said it would hand over two new coastguard vessels to the Philippines to “support search and rescue missions and increased maritime domain awareness”.
The announcement followed a visit to Manila last month by Pentagon undersecretary for policy Elbridge Colby, who said the US would deploy four fast-response cutters on rotation to work with their Philippine counterparts in the country’s exclusive economic zone.
Observers said the shift highlighted the squeeze on US resources, with warships continuing to be deployed to the Middle East as a peace deal with Iran proves elusive.
“Deploying the coastguard in the Asia-Pacific is essentially a forced choice for Washington right now,” said Chen Xiangmiao, a research fellow at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies.
“Because the US Navy’s operational costs are so high and military assets are tied down by Middle East conflicts, using lighter, less expensive coastguard cutters helps ease the financial burden.”
Lyle Goldstein, a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, said the US Navy was overstretched now, “especially the surface forces”.
He said: “The US-Iran war has already proven to be a tremendous drain on these forces, so it is not a surprise that the US Navy and Pentagon strategists are trying to offload some missions to the US Coast Guard.”
The use of coastguard vessels rather than warships was seen as less politically sensitive by some countries in the region, which were increasingly wary of being caught up in the rivalry between the US and China, Chen said.
“Southeast Asian nations are wary of excessive US naval deployment. Working with a law enforcement agency like the coastguard is much more acceptable to them and helps ease local anxieties,” he added.
While the US Coast Guard is officially one of the six branches of the American armed forces, foreign countries generally perceive and interact with it as a law enforcement and maritime security agency rather than a combat force.
Goldstein, who is also the director of the Asia programme at Defence Priorities, a Washington-based security think tank, said Washington was copying Beijing’s strategy of using the coastguard to avoid escalating tensions.
In recent years, China has regularly used coastguard vessels to project power in the disputed waters in the South China Sea while trying to avoid a military response.
But Goldstein said that while China was unlikely to see the deployment of cutters in Southeast Asia as a challenge to its dominant maritime position in the western Pacific, cooperation between Washington and Taipei could be seen differently.
In July, the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto embassy, raised eyebrows by releasing an undated photo of a US coastguard vessel sailing beside a Taiwanese one.
Weeks later, the Coast Guard Administration in Taipei said the US was training its personnel in maritime control and law enforcement under a memorandum of understanding signed in 2021.
“Beijing will view cooperation between the US Coast Guard and Taiwan maritime forces as potentially crossing a dangerous threshold,” Goldstein said.
He added that this could prompt a strong response from China and might further escalate an already tense situation.
Beijing views the talks as an infringement of its sovereignty and a threat to its own maritime rights.
It also regards Taiwan as part of China and has never renounced the use of force to reunite it with the mainland.
Most countries, including the US and its allies Japan and the Philippines, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons to defend itself.
The increasing coastguard presence in the region may also have other downsides for the US.
Goldestein said it could distract from the coastguard’s core role of protecting US home shores and this would “inevitably take a toll on the effectiveness of its missions closer to home that Americans will feel acutely”.