RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – US national security adviser said the US Coast Guard (USCG) was basing Enhanced Response Cutters in the western Pacific for maritime security missions, citing illegal fishing and harassment of IUU (Illegal, Unreported, Unregulated) fishing vessels by China.
In a statement, Mr Robert O’Brien also said the Coast Guard planned to evaluate next fiscal year the feasibility of basing Fast Response Cutters in American Samoa in the South Pacific.
The statement described the United States as a Pacific power and added that China’s “illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, and harassment of vessels operating in the exclusive economic zones of other countries in the Indo-Pacific threatens our sovereignty, as well as the sovereignty of our Pacific neighbors and endangers regional stability.”
It said US efforts, including by the Coast Guard, were “critical to countering these destabilizing and malign actions.”
“To that end, the USCG is strategically home porting significantly enhanced Fast Response Cutters … in the western Pacific,” the statement said, without detailing where the vessels would be based or how many were involved.
“Enhancing the presence of the USCG in the Indo-Pacific ensures the United States will remain the maritime partner of choice in the region,” his statement said.
Mr Pompeo led a meeting of foreign ministers from India, Japan and Australia this month in Tokyo, a grouping Washington hopes to develop as a bulwark against China’s growing assertiveness and extensive maritime claims in the region, including to most of the strategic South China Sea.
The US Navy regularly angers China by conducting what it calls “freedom of navigation” operations close to some of the islands China occupies that are also claimed by other states.
O’Brien’s announcement comes less than two weeks ahead of the Nov 3 US presidential election, in which President Donald Trump’s campaign has made a tough approach to China a major foreign policy theme.
The Chinese are getting bolder
Over the past couple of months, SkyTruth analyst Bjorn Bergman has been watching some interesting activity by the Chinese fishing fleet in the Pacific. A large Chinese-flagged squid-fishing fleet had been fishing at the boundary of Peru’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) throughout the summer and fall of 2016. Then, near the middle of December, many of them suddenly began migrating some 3,000 miles to the northwest.
At their new location, around 118 degrees West longitude and just north of the equator, they met up with another group of Chinese-flagged vessels. These vessels had just moved to this remote part of the Pacific about a week or two earlier. Some arrived from China and Indonesia, and some came directly from fishing just outside the Japanese EEZ.