The US Coast Guard has four principal missions: (1) Maritime Safety; (2) Maritime Law Enforcement; (3) Marine Environmental Protection; and (4) National Defense. Although the first major review of Coast Guard roles and missions since 1982 was recently completed, these four basic US Coast Guard missions are unlikely to change.²⁰ The missions are supported by seven major operating program areas of the Coast Guard, including particularly "Enforcing Maritime Laws and Treaties," as well as Search and Rescue, Marine Safety, Marine Environmental Protection, Aids to Navigation, Defense Readiness, and Ice Operations.²¹

 The US Coast Guard's Maritime Law Enforcement (MLE) Program is responsible for enforcement of laws and treaties in three major areas-Living Marine Resources, Drug Interdiction, and Alien Migrant Interdiction.

　

 The US Coast Guard conducts these three major Maritime Law Enforcement missions often simultaneously with its other major missions such as Search and Rescue, and often with the support of the US Navy. As US Navy leaders recently stated "Navy ships are assisting in Coast Guard missions for peacetime operations in this hemisphere. The Navy supports counter-drug operations on a daily basis, and remains available to assist the Coast Guard during periods of crisis, such as mass migrations, major search and rescue operations or other significant maritime events."²² (Indeed, Navy ships were deeply involved in this decade in supplementing the Coast Guard in Cuban and Haitian migrant search and rescue and interdiction and in assisting Coast Guard rescue and recovery efforts after general major air disasters.) As noted earlier, there is also domestic legal authority for the Coast Guard to request assistance from the Navy and other Federal agencies in performing its duties, and there are even exceptions allowing use of other military forces in law enforcement, in cases of extra-territorial actions and with prior approval of the Secretary of Defense or the Deputy Secretary of Defense. For example, in October 1996, such an exception was made to allow US Marine Corps backup to a Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment boarding a merchant ship off Bermuda carrying 83 violent illegal migrants.²³

 In the specific area of counterdrug operations, the US Navy supports the Coast Guard as lead agency for Detection and Monitoring. With their advanced radar and communications systems, Navy ships and aircraft are vital information collection and tracking assets for drug interdiction.²⁴ The US Navy currently provides continuous presence of two vessels in the Caribbean and normally one in the Eastern Pacific dedicated to counterdrug operations. Although the US Navy does not have law enforcement authority, and the Coast Guard has the lead in Interdiction and Seizure and Arrest, Navy vessels can also serve as interdiction and seizure and arrest assets by embarking Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachments (LEDETs). LEDETs typically deploy on Navy vessels for 6-7 weeks. The LEDET program averages about 35 deployments a year onboard US Navy frigates, destroyers, and cruisers. The main operating areas for these deployments are the Transit Zone areas in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific. Overall, LEDETs from US Navy platforms average 100 boardings of suspect vessels a year.²⁵ LEDETs from Navy ships this decade have also conducted tens of thousands of searches of ships suspected of violating UN embargoes on Iraq and former Yugoslavia.²⁶

 The US Coast Guard, in turn, has in the post-Cold War period increasingly cooperated with and supported the US Navy and US regional Combatant Commanders through peacetime engagement international operations. In the law enforcement area, the Coast Guard has had the lead role in cooperative programs and law enforcement training of maritime forces, particularly in Caribbean States, including organizing and training (with Canada) a coast guard in Haiti and, more recently, deploying a support tender to the Caribbean to train regional coast guards. There is even an informal working relationship with the Cuban Border Guard to facilitate migrant interdiction and counterdrug operations across the Florida Straits. The US Coast Guard has also developed a working relationship in fisheries enforcement in the Bering Sea with the Russian Federal Border Service.²⁷ The US Coast Guard provides extensive training in US Coast Guard facilities and through overseas Mobile Training Teams (MTT). Since 1986, over 5000 MTTs have deployed in. 65 countries. The US Coast Guard each year trains 2000 personnel overseas through MTTs and 300 personnel at its schools in the US. In addition to the traditional deployments of Coast Guard ships with US Navy forces in the annual UNITAS exercises in the Caribbean and South America, recent years have seen Coast Guard units increasingly active in US overseas peacetime engagement deployments. This is not surprising, given that a majority of the world's "navies" are closer in size and mission to the US Coast Guard than to the US Navy. Also, Coast Guard "white hull" ships-with their prime missions of humanitarian search and rescue, safety, and law enforcement-are often more acceptable and their presence a less sensitive issue to other nations (for example, in Haiti in 1994, US Coast Guard ships were able to continue contacts after US Navy ships had been turned away.) So in recent years, at the request of US regional Combatant Commanders, Coast Guard cutters have forward deployed to the Mediterranean, Baltic, and Black Seas, the Persian Gulf, and to join US Navy forces in the annual CARAT exercises in Southeast Asia. Recently, the Coast Guard deployed a cutter, for the first time since World War II, with a Carrier Battle Group.²⁸ Also, Coast Guard port security units and aviation units have deployed to Turkey, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and South Korea. In the Pacific region, in the Philippines the US Coast Guard has conducted an initial assessment for a US aid project on waterways management, and has transferred patrol boats to the Philippines. In September 1999, the first student from Singapore attended the US Coast Guard National Search and Rescue (SAR) school, and the US Coast Guard is conducting a joint SAR course at the Civil Aviation Center in Singapore. The Coast Guard is conducting a maritime needs assessment for Vietnam as a follow-on to bilateral exercises. A Coast Guard MTT recently visited Japan to assist their containerized inspection efforts. And twenty six Asia-Pacific regional states have personnel who have attended Coast Guard training courses in the US, or have received MTTs. Of particular note, in 1999 the US Coast Guard responded to migrant smugglers from the PRC targeting Guam for landings by deploying additional assets (a High Endurance Cutter, a C-130 aircraft, and an additional patrol boat and buoy tender) to supplement the normal Coast Guard assets (a patrol boat and buoy tender) in the forward Pacific region. In this Guam operation, over 18 smuggling ships were interdicted, and 1100 migrants returned."²⁹

　

 The historic close cooperation between the US Navy and the US Coast Guard will likely continue and intensify in coming years. As the Coast Guard 2020 future vision document makes clear, the Coast Guard will be increasingly called on as America's Maritime Law Enforcer, with clear scope for support from the US Navy. A 1995 agreement between the Secretaries of Defense and Transportation assigned the US Coast Guard four major national defense missions in support of US regional Commanders-in-Chief: (1) Maritime Interception Operations, (2) Military Environmental Response Operations, (3) Port Operations, Security, and Defense (in the US and overseas), and (4) Peacetime Military Engagement. In this latter area of engagement operations, the US Navy recently noted "The Coast Guard brings unique coast guard-type skills to the world's maritime and naval services・・・ However, there are limits to Coast Guard's ability to support this mission, and the current level of effort of approximately 370 shipdays per year is appropriate for the task."³⁰ The Navy also noted the need for Coast Guard assistance in even a Major Theater War, such as the recent Iraq war, specifically for port security and defense, environmental disaster response, and perhaps in coastal interdiction operations and "to escort high value sealift ships in medium and low threat environments." Although some perceive a potential Navy/Coast Guard battle over the overseas regional engagement mission, the fact is that a Coast Guard with 41 major cutters (twelve frigate size, 3000 ton, HAMILTON Class High Endurance Cutters, and 29 corvette-size Medium Endurance Cutters in two classes-thirteen 1820 ton, BEAR Class and sixteen 1000 ton, RELIANCE Class cutters), 190 aircraft, and 35,000 personnel-which would rank as the world's seventh largest "Navy"-does and must carry much more relative weight in US maritime calculations when the US "600 ship" Navy has been reduced to 295 ships, with just over 100 of these being surface combatants.³¹

 The way ahead for closer US Navy/US Coast Guard cooperation was outlined in the September 21, 1998 joint policy statement by the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Coast Guard (updated and reissued in late 2002). The objective of this policy statement was "to ensure a Navy and Coast Guard that can support one another's missions and tasks・・・"³² The National Fleet will be "comprised of surface combatants and major cutters that are affordable, adaptable, interoperable, and with complementary capabilities. ・・・whenever appropriate, designed around common equipment and systems, and including coordinated operational planning, training and logistics. The Navy's contribution will be highly capable multi-mission Navy surface combatants designed for the full spectrum of naval operations・・・ The Coast Guard's contribution will be maritime security cutters, designed for peacetime and crisis-response Coast Guard missions, and filling the requirement for relatively small, general-purpose, shallow draft warships. All ships and aircraft of the National Fleet will be interoperable・・・"³³ Clearly, the Us Navy sees value in the potential of the Coast Guard to provide supplements to the "low end" of its ship mix, particularly as smaller US Navy frigates are retired without similar replacements. The US Coast Guard, for its part, sees its National Fleet role as providing additional support for its new "Deepwater" program (now in development) to acquire an integrated system of ships, aircraft, and C4I to replace its older cutters and some older aircraft. Although the Commandant of the Coast Guard has also stated that "The Coast Guard is not a navy but a distinctive force with a separate identity and purpose," it seems likely that both of these US maritime armed services, driven by their respective needs, will increasingly cooperate in future operations.³⁴

　

 As the earlier summary indicated, the threat of maritime terrorism is broad and growing.³⁵ (The threat of maritime piracy at sea, often violent, is of course similar in many respects to maritime terrorism and has been a growing concern for over a decade.) A considerable part of the threat of maritime terrorism and piracy must be addressed at the national level, in ports and territorial waters. Thus the importance of national Navy-Coast Guard cooperation emphasized above. But other aspects of the maritime terrorist threat can be addressed at the global level by the current work of the IMO, regional shipping organizations, and even the recent APEC shipping security initiative, to establish global standards for anti-terrorism security for ports, containers, and ships. However, there still remains the real need for regional cooperation to operate against the terrorist threat against ships underway at sea, particularly in the sea lanes and choke points of the Asia Pacific region.

 Now is the time to consolidate the gains achieved in maritime confidence-building and transparency over the past decade and move to "security-building" through Maritime Operational Cooperation against the new maritime terrorist threats to critical Asia Pacific sea lanes and choke points.

 Geopolitically, the foundation for greater Maritime Operational Cooperation has been established by three elements: a common threat (in maritime terrorism (and piracy)), a common goal in security for the sea lanes-increasingly essential to provide the oil/gas and trade products on which East Asian economic development and prosperity depend, and adequate basic levels of maritime familiarity and trust to provide a basis for initial maritime cooperation. This basic level of familiarity and trust is thanks largely to the maritime confidence-building measures, especially naval dialogue and visits, of the past decade. In fact, initial elements of Maritime Operational Cooperation can be seen in a variety of recent maritime events in the Asia Pacific region, including the increasing exercises and cooperation of maritime vessels from Japan and India to help counter piracy in the Southeast Asia region, the coordination of piracy patrols by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, US and Indian naval cooperation (including in anti-piracy patrols), and the increasing multilateral character of major regional military exercises such as Cobra Gold and CARAT.

 The new emphasis on Asia Pacific Maritime Operational Cooperation will require efforts that are more focused, coordinated, multilateral, and interoperable. Focus is needed to identify where, in the vast distances of sea lanes between the Persian Gulf and Northeast Asia, limited naval (and perhaps coast guard) forces should focus their Maritime Operational Cooperation. Since such cooperation would logically consist initially of patrols of sea lanes and choke points which are at greatest threat from maritime terrorists (as well as violent piracy at sea), an initial geographic focus might best be on sea lane patrols (and escorts of particular selected high-value ships) from the Western to the Eastern entrances to the Strait of Malacca. For the long, open distances from the Persian Gulf exit to Sumatra, and then again from the Singapore Straits through the South China Sea to Northeast Asia, it would probably be adequate to initially have just informal agreements on loose coordination of periodic passages and patrols by nations having longer range naval and coast guard vessels. Of course, both these suggested areas of operational focus will require multinational maritime forces that coordinate their operations more closely, and are capable of at least basic communications interoperability.

 Despite the new geopolitical context of common threat, common concern for sea lane security, and (maritime CBM-induced) greater familiarity among regional navies-all of which now argue for a move to Maritime Operational Cooperation in the Pacific-there is a need for regional nations to first find a way to address the details of how (and how much) to formalize this Maritime Operational Cooperation. Despite recent progress, regional historical rivalries and territorial disputes persist, and despite the recent first region-wide security forum in the form of the ARF, the region does not have (nor is it likely to have in the near future) an alliance with an integrated military command structure. It was such a structure in NATO that facilitated the establishment and operation of "standing naval forces", and the lack of such conditions explains why there is still no formal "Standing Naval Force Pacific" in prospect. Yet the proposed Asia Pacific Maritime Operational Cooperation (APMOC), while not a "standing naval force", can help provide the essential elements of maritime security for critical regional sea lanes and choke points.

 For the Way Ahead, we might consider three paths which could be used, singly or in combination, to promptly work out the details of how (and how much) to formalize Asia Pacific Maritime Operational Cooperation. The first path is for the unofficial ("Track Two") CSCAP Maritime Cooperation Working Group to address this as one of its priority orders of business, with a goal of passing initial ideas as a basis for discussion at the next annual Western Pacific Naval Symposium (WPNS) Meeting in 2004. (Indeed, Asia Pacific Maritime Operational Cooperation is consistent with two of the already proposed WPNS action items, Multilateral Cooperation for SLOC Security and Naval Force Protection. The second path, then, would be for WPNS to address the modalities of this initiative at its next biennial heads of navies meeting, to be held in Singapore in 2004. WPNS has the advantage of "unofficial" but authoritative involvement of all key regional naval leaders-with the disadvantage of infrequent annual meetings, which may not pace the urgency of the current maritime terrorism problem. Another, or more likely a parallel, path would be for the CSCAP Maritime Cooperation Working Group to forward its initial ideas to the Spring 2004 ARF Intersessional Meeting on CBMs. This meeting is at the official (Track One) level, but with delegations headed by diplomatic personnel; so to be most useful in endorsing and advancing ideas for enhanced Maritime Operational Cooperation, the Spring 2004 ARF Intersessional Meeting on CBMs should also schedule a one day Maritime Experts Group meeting like the one it held with its October 1998 meeting. With the CSCAP Maritime Cooperation Working Group developing the initial ideas, and WPNS and ARF then further elaborating and endorsing these ideas, enhanced Asia Pacific Maritime Operational Cooperation can help ensure that the arms acquired by regional navies are mostly focused on the immediate threat of maritime terrorism, and are building security for regional sea lanes and for the economies of all the regional nations that increasingly depend on these sea lanes, thereby truly "Securing the Oceans."

　

 The security environment of the sea lanes in the Asia-Pacific region is threatened by terrorism and other extensive and complex major problems of "law and order at sea" such as piracy, drugs/smuggling, and illegal migration. However, there is clearly recent increased awareness and moves to further regional cooperation in dealing with terrorism and these problems, as well as to enhance national cooperation in sea lane security between naval and civil maritime (e.g., Coast Guard) agencies. Such enhanced national and regional cooperation is likely to be the critical element in managing these threats to the security environment of the sea lanes in the Asia-Pacific region and "Securing the Oceans."