The Maritime Component: Coast Guard Plays Expanded Role In U.S. Sea Power Equation

By BRUCE B. STUBBS

Capt. Bruce B. Stubbs, USCG (Ret.), the Coast Guard's former director of operations capability, is author of The Coast Guard's National Security Role in the 21st Century, published in 1992 by the Naval War College.

If Alfred Thayer Mahan were living today, he would change his definition of sea power. The U.S. national-security calculus has undergone dramatic change since the 1890 publication of his seminal book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783. Mahan's concept of maritime dominance rested upon the means--forces, bases, seaborne commerce, and colonies--needed to defeat organized military threats. Colonies have long disappeared, America's seaborne commerce in U.S.-flagged ships has shrunk to insignificance, and military threats to the United States in or close to American waters are today almost nonexistent.

Mahan's definition of sea power would now focus upon naval forces, which exist for military purposes, principally warfighting. Naval forces represent naval power, but naval power and sea power are not the same. Naval power is the ability to use military means at sea; it is an element of sea power. Or, as Dr. Colin S. Gray, an internationally recognized strategic analyst, has written, "... naval power is simply a country with a strong navy."

In today's world, and tomorrow's, true sea power for the United States is a broader and more expansive concept than naval power. Sea power is the ability of the United States to use the seas safely, securely, fully, and wisely to achieve national objectives.

Throughout history, all great and powerful seafaring nations have built navies to protect their trade and influence events ashore, and the strongest of those navies have always aspired for the end-states of "sea control" or "sea denial"; a few have even striven for "command of the seas"--to protect trade, project power ashore, and conduct both coercive and noncoercive naval diplomacy.

The Inexorable Link

Since the earliest days of the Republic, from the punitive expeditions to the Barbary Coast to the escort of U.S.-flagged tankers in the Persian Gulf, the United States has always sought to protect its merchant marine from armed attack.

America has other enduring maritime interests, however, that go far beyond the need for the purely military capabilities needed for warfighting. America has always wanted to use the seas safely, securely, fully, and wisely--to preserve its marine resources, to ensure the safe transit and passage of cargoes and people on its waters, to protect its maritime borders from intrusion, to uphold its maritime sovereignty, to rescue the distressed who ply the oceans in ships, and to prevent misuse of the oceans. These are timeless interests that collectively can be described as the nation's maritime security and safety interests.

Today, in the cusp of the new millennium, the United States is a true maritime sea power, with a broad array of interests and concerns in all of the world's oceans. The Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea, the Pacific Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Ocean wash some 95,000 miles of the several U.S. coastlines and encompass almost 3.4 million square miles of U.S. territorial seas and exclusive economic zones (EEZs). Because the United States is the world's leading maritime trading nation, its economy is increasingly and inexorably linked to the seas.

More than 95 percent of the nation's trade tonnage--excluding that transported over the land bridges with Canada and Mexico--is carried on and across those seas by ships. But less than 3 percent of that trade is carried by U.S.-flag vessels. Numerous major ports along the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts serve as America's gateways to the world. One-quarter of all U.S. domestic goods is shipped by water, and half of the oil consumed in the United States arrives by sea. Fragile living resources, with some fisheries in crisis from overexploitation and pollution, support a $24 billion commercial fishing industry and tens of thousands of jobs.

Coastal tourism and marine recreation, moreover--which in 1997 generated $71 billion in income to state and local economies (85 percent of all U.S. tourism-related revenues)--are the fastest-growing sectors of the U.S. service industry and demand clean shorelines and marine environments. And these are but a few of the indicators of the importance of the oceans, beyond strictly military uses, to the United States.

Throughout this immense maritime domain that is home to all these activities, the U.S. Coast Guard upholds, ensures, and protects the nation's enduring maritime interests against an extensive list of threats and challenges unprecedented in scope and intensity. The Coast Guard is the only federal law-enforcement agency with jurisdiction both in U.S. waters and on the high seas, and is the only U.S. armed service not constrained by the Posse Comitatus Act. In domestic as well as international waters, the Coast Guard is the primary enforcer of U.S. laws and treaties related to customs and border control.

Among the Coast Guard's most important missions are the protection of living marine resources, safeguarding the marine environment, fighting piracy, the interdiction of illegal immigrants and contraband, and counterdrug operations. Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, USA (Ret.), director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, has warned of the persistent flow of illegal drugs that kill 15,000 Americans and cost the public more than $110 billion each year. From 1992 through 1998 Coast Guard law-enforcement teams conducted 597 drug-interdiction cases, seizing more than 393,000 pounds of cocaine and nearly 436,000 pounds of marijuana, and arresting 1,043 narco-traffickers. In 1999 alone, the Coast Guard interdicted more than 106,000 pounds of cocaine, keeping some 481 million "hits"--with a street value of $3.7 billion--off America's streets and out of its schools.

Enforcement and Interdiction

Coast Guard fisheries-enforcement boardings also have increased--from 9,440 in 1994 to 14,173 in 1998--and have played a critically important role in helping to rebuild and maintain fish stocks threatened by overfishing. The economic value of these fisheries to the United States is approximately $24 billion annually, and the U.S. EEZ holds some 20 percent of the world's commercial fishery resources.

Between 1980 and 1998 the Coast Guard interdicted nearly 290,000 illegal immigrants from 43 countries. Illegal migration from Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and other Central American countries continues to pose the greatest challenge for the Coast Guard's limited interdiction assets, but in 1998 China became the single greatest source country of human trafficking by sea--intelligence agencies estimate that as many as 20,000 illegal Chinese immigrants attempted to reach America by sea that year. The Coast Guard's at-sea interdiction operations save taxpayers more than $15 million each year--the estimated cost if INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) agents had to apprehend the illegal migrants ashore. The costs avoided from the interdiction of Haitian refugees alone from 1990 through 1998 have been estimated at nearly $140 million.

The current U.S. National Security Strategy states that "the safety of our citizens" is a vital national interest. From 1992 through 1997, the Coast Guard conducted 291,094 search-and-rescue (SAR) operations, saving 31,364 people from injury or death, assisting another 624,762 people in non-life-threatening situations, and preventing some $16.8 billion in property losses. With more than 85 percent of the U.S. population living on or near the coasts (including the Great Lakes), with U.S. oceanborne trade perhaps tripling during the next two decades, with a virtual explosion in cruise-ship demand during the same time frame, with fishing vessels and offshore platforms venturing farther offshore, and with a dramatic increase in personal watercraft and recreational boats also projected, the job of ensuring maritime safety and security will become even more challenging.

The Coast Guard's prevention, enforcement, and response functions in marine environmental protection help to reduce the amount of pollution entering the U.S. waterways and the oceans of the world. In response to marine environmental security challenges, and as a world leader in marine environmental protection, the Coast Guard shapes the safety and pollution-control standards for international and domestic maritime transportation. This is especially evident in what is called Port State Control. The latter is defined as "boarding, inspecting (or examining) ... and possibly detaining foreign-flagged vessels to ensure that they are in compliance with international regulations." In everyday language this means that the country of the port that a ship is visiting actively enforces international regulations rather than relying on the country in which the ship is registered to enforce them.

Numerous Other Missions

There is more. The Coast Guard's polar icebreaking fleet supports scientific and environmental investigations in both the Arctic and the Antarctic regions, and the service's domestic icebreaking efforts facilitate navigation and prevent flood damage, saving taxpayers more than $93 million annually.

Meanwhile, world and coastal shipping continues to grow, and offshore exploration for oil and gas resources continues to expand--at ever greater distances from shore, and in deeper waters. Both of these trends further increase the need for effective enforcement of laws and regulations. The Coast Guard's prevention of oil spills from all potential sources and activities saves taxpayers another $5.8 billion each year in oil losses and cleanup costs that are not incurred, and in environmental damage that has been prevented.

When prevention and enforcement fail, however, the Coast Guard maintains a rapid-response capability to contain and recover from pollution incidents such as the massive 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Three well-trained and well-equipped Coast Guard National Strike Teams are at the ready to respond to major oil or other hazardous materials spills. Moreover, the same Strike Teams may serve as the nation's "first-responders" to a terrorist attack involving the use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons in a crowded port or harbor.

Because of its mandate to ensure a safe, efficient, and effective U.S. marine transportation system, the Coast Guard is charged with regulating and inspecting commercial and private vessels, licensing merchant mariners, managing waterways, and protecting the security of the nation's ports. The U.S. marine transportation system "assets" include some 13 million Americans employed, in both seafaring and nonseafaring positions, in domestic shipping activities, including both coastal and inland-waterways operations. The system also supports a chain of economic activities that contribute about $750 billion to the U.S. economy.

The Movement of Commerce

The service's aids-to-navigation and VTS (Vessel Traffic Services) programs, moreover, help to ensure safe vessel movements, an increasingly critical need because of the huge growth predicted in global maritime trade by 2020 and the ever-growing number of ultra-large, deep-draft, and minimally crewed ships, many carrying hazardous cargoes, that will be entering U.S. ports and harbors and the nation's exclusive economic zones. In 1998, more than 8,000 foreign-flag vessels called at U.S. ports, and that number is likely to increase annually for the foreseeable future.

Today, almost all U.S. overseas trade, and 25 percent of U.S. domestic/intercity trade, moves by water. In addition: 134 million passengers transit U.S. waters each year in ferries, cruise/tour ships, and gaming vessels; 110,000 commercial fishing vessels harvest waters under U.S. jurisdiction; and millions of Americans and foreign tourists use 16 million recreational craft and frequent thousands of miles of U.S. beaches.

In the not-too-distant future, cruise ships carrying 6,000 or more people will be common. Strategically located "mega-ports" along the U.S. coasts will serve greater numbers of ships, while smaller "feeder ports" will contribute to the burgeoning vessel densities in offshore areas--all of which will further emphasize the requirement for effective vessel identification and tracking. Moreover, U.S. military strategy and operations will depend increasingly upon efficient inland waterways and multimodal transport nodes, safe ports, and secure sealift for the estimated 95 percent of material that still will be carried by ships to support U.S. forces involved in overseas conflicts.

Homeland Security and Hemispheric Defense

In addition to serving America's enduring maritime interests, the Coast Guard supports U.S. national-defense objectives in numerous ways. The Coast Guard enjoys a unique status as an armed force charged with supporting the maritime component of homeland security--i.e., the military defense of U.S. maritime borders, offshore zones, and waterways infrastructure. That role is underscored by the Coast Guard's extensive participation in joint-service naval/military operations (coupled principally to its law-enforcement authorities and capabilities, including a robust command-and-control network that rings the nation). The Coast Guard also plays an important role in peacetime forward-engagement and humanitarian-support missions, and in crisis-response operations in support of the National Military Strategy.

Coast Guard peacetime-engagement operations in both North and South America usually involve the maritime interests and agencies of U.S. friends and allies throughout the region and in many situations are much less threatening--and, therefore, more politically acceptable--than a purely naval or military presence.

In almost all of its operations in the Western Hemisphere the Coast Guard's presence is both relevant and useful to the host country. Because of its unique status and image, many countries routinely accept, desire, and explicitly request Coast Guard assistance in various ways. Numerous Caribbean and Latin American governments have bilateral agreements with the United States authorizing combined maritime operations and/or allowing the Coast Guard to conduct missions in the waters of those nations.

Throughout the immense U.S. maritime domain, the Coast Guard upholds, ensures, and protects the nation's enduring interests and activities to support maritime security and safety and to preclude misuse of the seas by others.

A Multiplicity of Threats

Increasingly, the seas serve as highways for a bewildering variety of transnational threats--drug smugglers, weapons of mass destruction as well as conventional weapons, and illegal migrants, to name a few--and challenges that honor no national frontier. The Cold War largely defined U.S. security during the last half of the 20th century, but today the United States no longer faces a single superpower adversary. Instead, it faces numerous threats, many of them with a maritime component.

U.S. "national security" is no longer focused primarily on direct military threats but on a rich tapestry of economic, social, environmental, political, diplomatic, cultural, and military issues. For that reason the current national-security strategy is based on a much more expansive construct which recognizes that the diverse and numerous threats facing the nation must be countered through an integrated approach that defends the U.S. homeland and the American people, helps shape the international environment, permits an early response to crises, and prepares for an increasingly uncertain future. The dividing line between domestic and foreign policy has been blurred by globalization--the process of accelerating economic, technological, cultural, and political integration. The nation's borders are under increasing siege from this broad spectrum of threats and challenges, most of which have a pronounced law-enforcement dimension but, in many cases, little if any direct military context.

In early 2000, after a year of intense efforts, the Presidential Task Force on U.S. Coast Guard Roles and Missions reaffirmed the assessment that U.S. national security can no longer be defined solely in terms of direct military threats and concluded that--because of its distinctive blend of law-enforcement, military, humanitarian, and diplomatic capabilities--the United States must continue to rely upon the Coast Guard to support the maritime component of U.S. national-security requirements well into the 21st century.

Today, the Coast Guard's unique capabilities help ensure homeland security, protect critical infrastructures, safeguard U.S. maritime sovereignty, and defend American citizens and interests. The "power" inherent in these Coast Guard capabilities is a key component of the nation's overall maritime power. To be a truly global sea power, the United States must control what takes place in its own sovereign waters and exercise influence in international waters of vital concern to U.S. interests.

Absent an organized military threat, the responsibility for upholding U.S. maritime sovereignty in the Western Hemisphere will rest more and more upon the Coast Guard. Traditional military threats to U.S. naval and maritime interests are now much less than they were during the Cold War, but criminal, operational, commercial, and environmental threats are much greater. Moreover, because of Posse Comitatus constraints, the Department of Defense services cannot be used to meet those threats. Furthermore, the Navy's traditional missions of sea control, power projection, and forward presence are increasingly irrelevant in the Western Hemisphere. Consequently, the ability of the Coast Guard to exercise its law-enforcement capabilities is a very large reality that on many missions makes the Coast Guard the force of choice for the nation's decision makers.

The New Power Equation

The use of naval power to achieve national military objectives is still fundamental to most seafaring nations, but today it is but one manifestation of a broader concept of sea power--as is the unique power component provided by the Coast Guard. Sea power for America is, at a minimum, a combination of the Coast Guard's maritime power contribution, the commercial power contribution provided by the U.S.-flag merchant marine, and the Navy's naval power contribution. In this new age, America still needs naval power for assured access and to command the seas, project power, and shape events on the land. But it also needs the Coast Guard's maritime power to use the seas safely, fully, securely, and wisely--and to support U.S. maritime security and safety, particularly in the Western Hemisphere.

Mahan's earlier definition of sea power may now be too narrow in scope. What is perhaps needed today is a broader definition that better fits the current naval/maritime situation and tomorrow's national-security environment. Economic globalization, shifting demographics, technological revolutions, and the reality of finite resources and fragile environments have already dramatically affected U.S. maritime interests and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The oceans and inland waterways not only carry the commercial trade essential to the nation's economic health but also serve as conduits for illegal migration, drug-smuggling, and other transnational threats.

Moreover, America's burgeoning economic links with the rest of the world will lead to further increases in the volume and value of the nation's maritime trade, and translate into continuing challenges for U.S. security. In this new age sea power still includes naval power for the traditional purposes of sea control, sea denial, naval diplomacy, assured access, and power projection. It also includes, though, the Coast Guard's maritime power to uphold, protect, and ensure the nation's maritime security and safety. *

The Spectrum of Threats To America's Enduring Maritime Interests

* Direct challenges to U.S. maritime sovereignty.
* Violations of U.S. laws, international laws, and diplomatic agreements.
* Illegal migration and contraband smuggling.
* The illegal exploitation of both living and inorganic marine resources.
* Asymmetric and nonmilitary threats involving the use of violence, including the use of weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical/biological) by extremist groups, organized crime, and/or terrorists.
* Purposeful and unintentional environmental degradation and over-fishing activities.