The Rise of Coast Guards in East and Southeast Asia
Lyle J. Morris
Lyle J. Morris is a policy analyst at the RAND Corpo-
ration, where he focuses on security developments in
East and Southeast Asia. He has published recently
on maritime security in the Asia-Pacific, U.S. mari-
time security capacity building in Southeast Asia,
and Chinese military modernization. Prior to join-
ing RAND, Morris was the 2010¨C11 Next Generation
Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research
and a research intern with the Freeman Chair in
China Studies at the Center for Strategic and Inter-
national Studies. Morris received his masterˉs degree
in international affairs from the Columbia Univer-
sity School of International and Public Affairs and
a bachelorˉs degree in international business from
Western Washington University.
Naval War College Review, Spring 2017, Vol. 70, No. 2
BLUNT DEFENDERS OF SOVEREIGNTY
W
hat is the role of coast guards in the realm of territorial disputes Until
ten years ago or so, few policy makers in East and Southeast Asia had to
grapple with this question, because regional navies, not coast guards, were the
central actors asserting sovereignty in disputed areas.1 The decision by states,
most notably China, to build up and employ coast guards as first-line defenders
during territorial disputes has resulted in the following recent trends in the region:
using them, as opposed to naval forces, as aggressive instruments of state
power to assert territorial claimsaa new and destabilizing phenomenon in
maritime territorial disputes.2
defenders of sovereignty,± undertaking actions
such as ramming other statesˉ coast guard and
fishing vessels, rather than acting as traditional
instruments of law enforcement against strictly
civilian actors.
ian controlaas instruments to protect claimed
territory while conducting peacetime patrols of
disputed maritime territory has blurred the line
between the platforms and missions traditional-
ly associated with °law enforcement± and those
associated with °national defense.±3
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76 NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW
vessels as components of state power has blurred further the boundaries
among civilian, government, and military roles in conflict and injected de-
stabilizing dynamics into maritime encounters
ingly important mission of coast guards in the region
At the center of regional coast guard growth is China, which recently con-
solidated four of its five agencies in charge of maritime law enforcement (MLE)
under one civilian bureaucracy called
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