Responding to the request of the Solomon Islands, the US Coast Guard sent the high-speed patrol boat Myrtle Hazard to patrol in the island’s exclusive economic zone after the Solomon Coast Guard ship needed repairs.
The U.S. patrol vessel “helps to fulfill the mission necessary to monitor maritime surveillance to prevent illegal, undeclared, and unregulated fishing in the northern Solomon Islands,” the Coast Guard said in a statement. America said.
The Myrtle Hazard is present in the region as part of Operation Blue Pacific. The US Coast Guard calls it “a multi-mission mission to promote security, safety, sovereignty, and economic prosperity in Oceania and strengthen our partnership”.
The Solomon Islands are one of many Pacific island nations that the United States supports in patrols as part of Operation Blue Pacific, along with Kiribati, Samoa, Fiji, Tonga and Papua New Guinea. These are all stops during the Foreign Minister’s recent visit China King conference.
Beijing proposes a regional economic and security cooperation agreement with about a dozen South Pacific island nations. The conference chaired by Mr. Wang Yi earlier this week could not agree on an agreement, but the Chinese foreign minister stressed that the sides had reached “five points of consensus”, such as a common commitment to deepening ties. strategic partnership and pursue common development, but excluding security.
This agreement, if approved, will mark a significant step forward for Beijing in its efforts to connect with the region, which plays a geostrategic role in the Indo-Pacific.
In the face of such efforts by Beijing, the US Coast Guard’s presence in the region has not received much attention, but is in fact very significant, as the US administration of President Joe Biden is promoting the Indian Ocean strategy. – Pacific.
“We will expand the US Coast Guard’s presence and cooperation in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific Islands, with a focus on advice, training, force deployment, and capacity building.” , the strategy said.
Information from the US Coast Guard says the force has spent several hundred days and traveled thousands of miles in the past two years to support the Pacific island nations.
It’s part of an effort to maintain US influence in the region through “hitchhiking agreements” with 11 Pacific island nations, including the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau. , Nauru, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
Under this agreement, law enforcement and defense forces of partner countries can hitchhike a US patrol boat to enforce law within their exclusive economic zones.
Collin Koh, an expert at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said the US has had deep ties to the region for a long time.
An “institutionalized defense and security cooperation network” is something Beijing will be hard pressed to follow, Koh said.
As seafood is the main food source and primary economic engine of the island nations, the US Coast Guard says the focus of Operation Blue Pacific is to stop illegal and unregulated fishing. These activities are very relevant to China.
“With the world’s largest fishing fleet, Chinese-flagged fishing vessels travel around the world to fish in other countries’ waters, especially in the exclusive economic zones of small countries,” 2021 report. of the Brookings Institution wrote.
Mr. Koh said that the scale of China’s fishing activity did not help Beijing to be an active force in the region.
Carl Schuster, a retired US admiral and former director of operations for the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, says that the US Coast Guard is a “nearly perfect tool for building an alliance with the US”. relations with the Pacific island nations”.
Some observers say China also has a well-equipped coast guard fleet that could do as well as the US in the region, but Koh thinks that won’t happen, at least for the foreseeable future.
This researcher believes that Beijing’s disruptive behavior in nearby areas, such as the East and South China Seas, keeps the Chinese coast guard very busy. This also makes the credibility of the Chinese coast guard doubtful, thereby creating a great advantage for the US Coast Guard.
“It’s hard to imagine China having enough political capital to promote the same thing that the US is doing now,” Koh said.
According to CNN
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