"Many Faces, One Ship, United by the Sea"

The CST Initiative: The Seaborne Dimension of the U.S. International Engagement Strategy

By DAVID B. NELSON

David B. Nelson is a naval and maritime analyst with Anteon Corporation's Center for Security Strategies and Operations.

The increased globalization that has characterized the post-Cold War strategic landscape, fueled by the opening of and growing interdependence between economies, technologies, and societies, has brought unprecedented economic growth, commerce, and migrations of people and ideas to virtually every nation of the world. However, just as globalization has generated numerous economic as well as social benefits, it also has created a situation in which land and maritime borders are quickly eroding--as is the control over those borders that can be exercised by sovereign nations. This, in turn, has enabled a broad range of transnational threats and challenges to flourish, oftentimes putting considerable strain on democratic institutions and the sovereignty of nations.

Nowhere are the harmful effects of globalization more evident--or in closer proximity to U.S. shores and national-security interests--than in the Caribbean Basin, where prosperity and stability have been largely undermined by the inability of regional governments to combat this new breed of transnational threats and challenges. Those threats include: drug and migrant smuggling; destabilizing arms-trafficking; disruptions in maritime trade; illegal trade in untaxed cargoes; violations of living-marine-resource and environmental-protection laws; unanticipated mass migration; and terrorism, piracy, and other crimes at sea.

Strengthening Allies, Thwarting Predators

The increase in potential threats was highlighted by Edward Jurith, then acting director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, when he warned the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control on 15 May 2001 that "Small nation-states in the Caribbean and Central America are vulnerable to predatory international trafficking organ-izations. Many of these nations lack the resources and the institutions to protect their sovereign land, air, and sea space; and their judicial, financial, and political systems are often incapable of effective response to the international criminal threat." This new national-security construct, in which "national security" is no longer focused solely on military threats to America, mandates that the United States take the lead in combating transnational crime in the Caribbean Basin, to ensure that no nation is left to face these threats alone and that transnational threats are thwarted far from U.S. shores.

As the nation's premier maritime--vice naval--service, the Coast Guard, with its unique blend of military, law-enforcement, humanitarian, regulatory, and diplomatic capabilities, is ideally suited to carry out the overseas-presence and peacetime-engagement operations necessary to achieve U.S. national-security objectives in the Caribbean. The Coast Guard pursues these objectives through a broad range of engagement activities, including: resident training for international students at U.S. facilities; the overseas deployment of Coast Guard mobile education and training teams; assistance with establishing maritime codes of law through its Model Maritime Service Code; Foreign Military Sales, Excess Defense Articles transfers; and, most recently, the multinational Caribbean Support Tender (CST).

Together, these activities enable the Coast Guard to:

1. Serve as a military, multimission, maritime service role model to help build effective maritime services in allied and friendly nations;
2. Confirm U.S. political, military, and economic commitments to allies and friends;
3. Bolster U.S. access to maritime, naval, law-enforcement, humanitarian, and environmental agencies within foreign governments;
4. Serve as the lead U.S. agency in international maritime security, safety, and environmental forums;
5. Operate with foreign coast guards and navies in training, exercises, and operations; and
6. Participate as a key element of the theater engagement plans of U.S. regional CINCs (commanders-in-chief) in support of U.S. forward-presence and crisis-response operations.

In contrast to most of the Coast Guard's other engagement activities, which date back to the end of World War II, the CST initiative grew out of the May 1997 U.S.-Caribbean Summit, held in Bridgetown, Barbados. During that summit, the United States and the several Caribbean nations participating agreed to a new "Justice and Security Action Plan" that committed the parties to a broad agenda for: (a) promoting cooperative initiatives aimed at combating illegal drug, migrant, and weapons trafficking; (b) strengthening law-enforcement and judicial institutions; (c) improving search-and-rescue and disaster-response capabilities; and (d) bolstering economic development and environmental protection.

As a first step in implementing the plan, Congress approved funding in fiscal year 1999 for the establishment of the Caribbean Support Tender initiative, which is funded jointly by the Coast Guard, State Department, U.S. Southern Command (CINCSOUTH), and the maritime services of the Caribbean nations participating. The CST is a multinational, mobile platform designed for maritime training, maintenance, logistics, and operations support. As such, it consolidates Coast Guard, State Department, and Department of Defense (DOD) engagement programs aimed at improving the operational effectiveness and interdiction capabilities of Caribbean nations.

Ideal International Platform

Originally commissioned in 1942, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Gentian was recommissioned as the CST on 27 September 1999 as the USCGC Gentian. Originally a 180-foot Balsam-class oceangoing buoy tender, the Gentian underwent a $13.5-million Service Life Extension Program upgrade in 1998 to modernize its communications, engineering, navigation, and training equipment and other facilities. It has berthing for 58 personnel, a 20-ton lift boom, and is capable of carrying 120,000 pounds of cargo, making it an ideal platform for conducting training and support missions.

The most unique characteristic of the CST, however, is its 46-person multinational crew, which consists of representatives from several European and Caribbean nations working side by side with U.S. Coast Guard personnel. Of the total crew, approximately 30 (including the commanding officer, executive officer, and engineering officer) are from the U.S. Coast Guard, the remaining 16 from the other participating nations. The Coast Guard crew includes a mix of training, maintenance, and language experts drawn from the service's International Training Division and Technical Assistance Field Team, as well as personnel with broad operational expertise.

During Gentian's recommissioning ceremony, Vice Adm. John E. Shkor, then-commander of the Coast Guard's Atlantic Area/Fifth District, proudly announced, "Today we mark the commissioning of the first U.S. ship fully dedicated to international training and support. ... The Caribbean Support Tender represents a significant step forward in our ability to deliver professional training, maintenance, and logistics support, and to learn from each other."

CST Roles & Missions

The overarching role of the Caribbean Support Tender is to improve the capability of Caribbean nations to protect their ports and trade routes, and to thwart the trafficking of drugs, weapons, and migrants in the region. It pursues these goals by circumnavigating the Caribbean to provide:

1. Mobile training facilities and programs in maritime law enforcement, search and rescue, marine safety, environmental protection, disaster response, and maintenance;

2. A mobile maintenance team with the workshops, tools, spare parts, and technicians needed to more effectively carry out maintenance on host-nation platforms and systems to ensure that regional coast guards and navies achieve higher, sustainable levels of operational readiness and self-sufficiency; and

3. A fully capable multimission mobile operating base for combined disaster-relief, search-and-rescue, and logistics and cargo-transport operations, as well as for support to CINCSOUTH and State Department engagement programs, exercises, and operations.

As part of its training efforts, the CST and its crew provide instruction in boarding tactics, small arms proficiency, small boat operations, navigation and seamanship, ship operations and damage control, hull and engine maintenance, and engineering and logistics administration.

Moreover, as part of the boarding-tactics curriculum, students are trained in international law, boarding preparation, effective communications, the detection of hidden compartments, drug testing, use of force, and weapons removal, all of which are critical to the development of a host nation's ability to carry out independent maritime law-enforcement and interdiction operations.

However, in a recent interview, Cdr. Barry Smith, policy and operations manager within the International Affairs Directorate at Coast Guard Headquarters, emphasized that, as a "mobile training team in a white hull," the Gentian's primary mission is to provide training, logistics, and maintenance support, not to conduct law-enforcement or aids-to-navigation operations.

This is by design, and by legal mandate, according to Smith and Lt. Cdr. Mary Sohlberg, CST program manager at Coast Guard Headquarters, because the bilateral agreement covering each nation's participation in the CST program strictly forbids the Gentian's foreign crew-members from participating in U.S. law-enforcement operations.

CST Deployments Overseas

Operationally, the Caribbean Support Tender reports to the Atlantic Area/Fifth District commander, headquartered in Portsmouth, Va., and is homeported at the Seventh District's Integrated Support Command in Miami, Fla. Gentian is expected to deploy to the Caribbean for approximately 180 days per year, usually on five- to eight-week deployment cycles. Since its recommissioning in September 1999, the CST has deployed seven times and has conducted numerous visits to 12 different countries--Antigua, the Bahamas, Curacao, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent.

To date, six nations--the Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Panama, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago--have signed Memoranda of Agreements with the Coast Guard, and have received State Department approval, to assign crew members to the Gentian. In addition, the seven Regional Security System nations--Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines--and Jamaica also have shown interest in joining the CST initiative.

Together, these deployments provide important benefits to the United States by, among other things:

1. Conveying democratic ideals to emerging nations, and to their maritime services;
2. Providing an operational bridge between nations aimed at improving communications and information sharing, and the building of coalitions;
3. Consolidating Coast Guard, State Department, Defense Department, and European international-engagement programs;
4. Providing a highly visible and effective tool for State Department and CINCSOUTH engagement missions;
5. Creating a professional engagement team that ensures continuity and fosters enduring cooperative relationships; and
6. Returning to the Coast Guard 100 cutter and 50 patrol boat days per year (which are reallocated to other Transit Zone counterdrug operating units).

Looking toward the future, the Coast Guard is evaluating ways to expand both the type and the frequency of its CST operations with its current Caribbean partners, as well as to expand the initiative to other nations, especially the nations of Central America and northern South America.

Furthermore, because drug-smuggling has surged recently in the Eastern Pacific, the Coast Guard is studying the feasibility of deploying a cutter to that region to conduct similar support missions in partnership with nations bordering the Pacific Transit Zone.

This expansion of the CST concept would be particularly timely, because calls for Coast Guard training, logistics, and maintenance support have been increasing in recent years--in large part because of the expansion of the service's Excess Defense Articles transfer program. Since 1995, the Coast Guard has transferred 28 patrol boats to foreign navies and coast guards, and in the coming fiscal year (FY 2002) plans to transfer some of its 44-foot boats to Guyana, El Salvador, and Nicaragua; some 82-foot boats to Colombia, Costa Rica, and Trinidad and Tobago; and 180-foot oceangoing buoy tenders to the Dominican Republic and Panama. The transfer of these excess vessels, however, does not automatically translate into operational success. A robust follow-up program will be necessary to ensure that these and other vessels in the region are properly operated and maintained.

As Gentian's motto--"Many Faces, One Ship, United by the Sea"--illustrates, the Caribbean Support Tender today plays a key role in the multinational effort to bolster the law-enforcement, military, judicial, and political institutions and capabilities of U.S. allies and other friends throughout the Caribbean Basin. As part of the overall Coast Guard/State Department/Defense Department engagement plan, the CST initiative promotes stability and prosperity throughout the region and provides a first line of defense against the broad spectrum of transnational threats that pose a "clear and present danger" to U.S. national security interests both at home and abroad.