A coast guard war looms in Asia

The growing deployment of coast guard vessels along the First Island Chain challenges the notion that these assets can help maintain peace and the “status quo” in the region. Instead of minimizing the risk of an outright military escalation or war between China and a US-led coalition, the continuous reliance on “white hulls” by both camps increasingly resembles a coast guard war.

The game has changed since US Coast Guard squadrons patrolled shallow coastal waters to choke off North Vietnamese weapons smuggling during the Vietnam War. Today, a battle for presence is under way, marked by near-daily incursions by Chinese assets countered by Taiwanese, Philippine and Japanese maneuvers, all backed by mounting support from the US.

The China Coast Guard has focused on expanding maritime enforcement control and executing “gray zone” tactics, primarily around Taiwan and in the South China Sea. These operations have coincided with significant, coordinated naval exercises alongside the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy.

According to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, these combined naval and coast guard movements serve as a live dress rehearsal aimed at isolating Taiwan and the Philippines from foreign intervention, establishing total control over the strategic waterways leading into the wider Pacific Ocean.

The US and allied coast guards have reacted by significantly accelerating their own coordinated “gray zone” and deterrence operations to counter intensifying Chinese naval, coast guard and maritime militia maneuvers. Moving past traditional, purely military responses, these efforts center heavily on interagency integration, joint shadowing and collaborative law enforcement exercises.

This maritime security cooperation in East and Southeast Asia has evolved into a highly integrated, overlapping network of multilateral alliances designed to counter Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region. While the US, Japan, Australia and the Philippines operate collectively under an informal defense framework known as the “Squad,” Taiwan is increasingly being linked through discreet parallel channels, newly built maritime assets and strategic planning.

Adding to this pack is the contribution of the Indian Coast Guard, which is multiplying naval voyages alongside its Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) partners — the US, Japan and Australia. The Indian Coast Guard offshore patrol vessel Shaunak last month sailed from Chennai, in eastern India, to Perth, in western Australia. While New Delhi tries to keep a low profile regarding territorial disputes in the China Seas and the Taiwan Strait, it shares maritime awareness data with Washington, Tokyo, Canberra and Manila under the Quad framework.

Beijing might be tempted to view the increase in US Coast Guard deployments as a sign of weakness, dictated by the operational tribulations of a navy overstretched by Middle Eastern commitments, rather than as a symmetric reaction to its hybrid warfare.

However, beyond reinforcing maritime domain awareness and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance activities, the multilateral cooperation between US and allied coast guards is cementing the anti-China front at a time when concerns persist about US President Donald Trump’s aversion to Washington’s system of alliances in the Indo-Pacific region.

This rising density of coast guard ships inevitably boosts the risk of incidents and accidents. Larger and better-armed coast guard vessels, which increasingly operate alongside navy units in flash-point waters, have effectively turned into naval resources rather than law enforcement assets. Used in this fashion, they risk becoming legitimate military targets for conflicting sides.

Against this backdrop, any coast guard’s “defusing effect” is about to vanish in the Indo-Pacific chessboard. Notably, China is engaged in a similar tit for tat with India along their disputed Himalayan border, with India utilizing specialized border guards — a sort of land equivalent of the coast guard — to counter Chinese military presence and patrolling deviations.

The trend is clear: “gray zone” operations by Beijing trigger “gray zone” responses from adversaries, on and land and at sea.

Emanuele Scimia is a journalist and analyst covering foreign affairs and defense issues.