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By Lieutenant Christopher A. Abel, U.S. Coast Guard
The Coast Guard must get into a defensive crouch to ward off the Navy’s advances into its territory, which includes the front lines of the drug war. What next? The Coast Guard needs to choose its core missions wisely and fight hard to keep them.
At precisely 2317, 7 November 1989, the Cold War ended at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. The gates were opened, the wall was breached, and East and West were reunited. The United States and its allies had won the longest war in modern times. We are just beginning to feel the staggering impact of this triumph. No one will be unaffected by the change. For the men and women of the Coast Guard, peace brings promise as well as peril. The choices made and actions taken at this great turning point in history will affect their service for many years to come. The Coast Guard will determine its future by how it navigates these waters. It needs to make some prompt changes to keep from standing into danger.
The immediate impetus for change comes from an old, familiar source: the Coast Guard’s chief partner and principal threat—the Navy. The Navy constitutes a political menace dating back nearly 200 years; its interests necessarily dictate the fortunes of the Coast Guard. Common sense and fiscal constraints make it essential to avoid unnecessary overlap in the roles and missions assigned these two similar organizations. The Navy’s size, political power, and importance to the nation’s survival allow it to choose the principal missions it calls its own. Consequently, the Coast Guard has long earned its living by performing duties that are neither attractive nor institutionally threatening to the Navy. The Coast Guard must always maintain a sharp lookout and avoid steaming under its big sister’s bow, because it will suffer virtually all of the damage from any collision.
The Navy is coming about in the wake of the Cold War’s rather sudden demise. Its 40-year track has finally led to a major turning point. For decades, the Navy had focused on slugging it out with the Soviet Union. Its primary emphasis was to prepare for the day when Cold War turned hot. Nuclear warfare and blue-water actions, multithreat battles and long convoy transits—this was the war the Navy was ready to fight. Yet, increasingly, those big- war scenarios appear to be tied to a time now long past; the threat of a general East-West shooting war has become quite remote. Instead, the Berlin Wall is found in U.S. gift shops, communism is facing collapse everywhere, and the Soviet Union is slipping deeper into the abyss day-by-day. As a consequence, the Navy’s old focus has been centered on a threat that no longer exists; it must immediately find some new missions that fit this new world.
The Navy needs to identify a new strategic role rather quickly, because of yet another post-Cold War dynamic: Americans are eager to spend their much-heralded “peace dividend.” All postwar warriors face lean budget times, but austerity this time will be acute. The nation’s defense budget is now headed straight into a fiscal free-fall. Having paid the bill for what turned out to be the greatest peacetime military buildup the United States has known, the taxpaying public is especially eager to get a break now. Equally important, the federal debt burden has become far too large to ignore any longer. Defense budget cuts would have had to take place, whether peace came or not. The Cold War’s termination provides an excuse to slash defense spending, with all existing bets off. The Navy must find itself a new reason to justify funding. Otherwise, it risks losing much more than just dollars, weapon systems, and platforms; it is going to lose flight hours, underway days, and well-trained personnel. While the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait may have postponed the day of reckoning for the military budgets, the world of tomorrow is certain to be different, but not necessarily less violent. The Navy must safeguard its ability to go in harm’s way.
For the Coast Guard, this fact of life will produce some significant long-term effects. The first to be felt is the Navy’s new eagerness to interdict drugs. Year after year, the old—Cold War—Navy eschewed active service in the drug war’s campaigns. Narcotics interdiction was a nuisance best left for the Coast Guard. The Navy loaned equipment and platforms to the effort, but only sparingly
SO as “not to interfere’’ with the Navy s preparations tor Waging its World War III actions at sea. Yet in the past year, the Navy discarded that approach and now serves in the drug war’s front lines. The conclusion of the Cold War took a reluctant bit player and made it a star. This transformation was all about money; the drug war is a source of new funds. The Navy has followed a wide trail of dollars to the one “war” in town.
With its new role in narcotics interdiction, the Navy has struck at the Coast Guard’s jugular vein. Maritime law enforcement has been the Coast Guard s own bailiwick lor 200 years. A Navy that’s running the drug war at sea can easily take over the rest of the show. Interdiction of aliens, fisheries enforcement, exclusive economic zone piotec- tion, and similar duties are all potential missions lor a threat-hungry Navy in the post-Cold War age. Its platforms already patrol the high seas in pursuit of illicit narcotics activity, and many other nations employ their own navies for enforcement work. Today, the trend is to limit application of the Posse Comitatus Act beyond U.S. borders. The Navy could quickly become the top cop on the maritime beat.
If that were to happen, the Coast Guard s odds of survival would then be quite slim, almost prohibitively so. It Would be limited in function to police, regulatory, and rescue duties within a few miles of the nation s shoreline. All of the Coast Guard’s seagoing cutters and aircraft Would go to the Navy for its blue-water work. More likely still, the Navy would handle all operational tasks. A civilianized agency might be all that remained to address regulatory issues and marine safety matters. Any Coast Guard that survived would bear little resemblance to the service today.
Even if the Navy goes no further than directing the nation’s drug war operations at sea, that single change is certain to affect tomorrow’s Coast Guard. Narcotics interdiction defines today’s service. It controls operations, acquisitions, and funding. The drug war has made the modern Coast Guard the outfit it is. And yet that connection will soon weaken greatly. Increasingly, Coast Guard units are going to become the Navy’s errand boys. Money, power, and public recognition will shift to the Navy, already in firm control of maritime war and tightening its grip. The character of the Coast Guard must reflect this change, whether by design or by default. Drugs won’t go away, but today’s drug-busting Coast Guard will not be the same.
The Navy’s new tack also threatens the Coast Guard in the area of military readiness and defense operations. A militarized Coast Guard risks direct competition with the post-Cold War Navy. As long as the Soviets remained a great menace and defense budgets reflected that immediate threat, the Navy could tolerate a small partner, sharing its own war-fighting role. Even then, the Coast Guard’s martial endeavors were limited to keeping the nation’s ports open, escorting slow convoys, and working in the
strategic backwater of low-intensity conflict (LIC). The Navy was not about to give up its lock on the popular big-budget, high-profile assignments. The Coast Guard could labor where its work would be needed, so long as its efforts remained on the back page. That rule has not changed with the end of the Cold War. What have changed
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U S. NAVY (M KETTENHOFFEN)
The Navy hydrofoil USS Gemini (PHM-6) proudly displays symbols of her four marijuana and two cocaine seizures, symbols that used to be seen only on the sides of Coast Guard vessels. With the diminished likelihood of a big- war scenario, the Navy is looking for new missions in addition to its Middle East ones.
are the missions that pay the big bills. The contemporary Middle East crisis aside, the hot tickets now relate to LIC and the troubled Third World. Predictably, the Navy is warming to LIC. Before long it and LIC will be friends. When that bonding takes place, the Coast Guard may find itself out on the street.
Ironically, LIC represents the one modern war-fighting challenge today’s Coast Guard can meet. Big-league technology has long passed the point where the service can compete and remain part-time warriors. The Coast Guard is constrained to perform where the military threat level is low. As small-unit specialists in a coastal environment, the service is ideally suited to LIC. It has developed LIC skills every day for some 200 years.
Take away LIC and the Coast Guard is finished as a credible arm of the nation’s armed forces. No other military mission can justify the Coast Guard retaining its guns. The Maritime Defense Zones were never a winner, even at the height of a global Cold War. They fulfilled Naval Reserve functions, and were based on a strategic afterthought. Now that the Soviet threat has receded, the nation’s ports face little danger of sabotage or attack. No resupply convoys will need to make a contested break out or long ocean transit. With regard to its blue-water combat potential, the Coast Guard is already well out of its league, and the nation gains nothing by having a second, junior- varsity navy. No strategic doctrine requires calling the
Coast Guard to arms. Its proud combat record has been gathering dust. Several decades have passed since any Coast Guard unit last came under fire. Although today’s service has been working hard to upgrade its institutional war-fighting stance, the task is enormous and the end of the Cold War makes much of it moot. LIC remains the Coast Guard’s best bet to contribute to the military strength of this nation.
While the Cold War’s conclusion holds genuine risk in the realms of law enforcement and defense operations, it also presents a unique opportunity to steer out of danger. The breadth and depth of today’s worldwide change breed a universal sense of transition. As the world’s stage is being reset, every prop seems to be in motion. This mood of renewal is particularly keen for the Coast Guard; its arrival comes just as the service begins its third century- The time is ripe for the Coast Guard to remake itself to conform to tomorrow’s changed world.
One thing that is certain is that the world will concentrate on saving this planet from man’s deadly abuse. Environmental issues have moved near the top of the global agenda. No longer preoccupied with a great East-West split and the specter of a devastating nuclear war, the world’s population will turn more and more to protecting the earth. Within the United States, the environmental movement is a grassroots phenomenon of considerable force. It cuts cleanly across economic, regional, ethnic, and political lines. Of Americans polled, 80% want more environmental protection, regardless of cost.1 In yet another survey, a clean environment held a higher priority than a good income or even sex.2 The Environmental Protection Agency administrator is bound for the cabinet, new environmental laws are being added almost daily, and Earth Day 1990 kicked off an international “Decade of the Environment.” This trend is not one that is likely to abate for a long while, because the risks are so great, the need is so immense, and the time left for action is so alarmingly short.
For the Coast Guard, this trend could not have developed at a more opportune time. The end of the Cold War is converting prime missions into likely dead ends. With both guns and drugs slipping out of its grasp, the Coast Guard is badly in need of some help. Protecting the environment is a longstanding duty the Coast Guard can credibly claim as its own. From managing fish stocks to cleaning up beaches and even guarding timber reserves located ashore, the Coast Guard has been involved in safeguarding ecological systems for more than a century. A recent spate of major oil spills offshore has highlighted this mission and reminded the public that it is the Coast Guard that stands between it and a sea of black goo. Consequently, the time is right to reassert that strong heritage. When Congress thinks “environment,” it immediately must think of the Coast Guard. The service should seize any and all opportunities to consolidate its hold on environmental work.
Unfortunately, however, today’s postwar Coast Guard’s capability to protect the environment has atrophied badly. The press of other duties siphoned funding and attention away from this role. The marine science
S COAST GUARD (C. KALNBACH)
technician rating was pared to bare bones, no oceanographic cutters remain in commission, and the polar icebreaking fleet has been gutted, greatly limiting marine science research. Pollution incidents inevitably were courted by closing vessel traffic systems in busy waterways. The service’s tanker inspection scheme is now burdened close to its own breaking point. Even spill-fighting strike teams Were cut back significantly, from three units to two. Otti- ccrs either are leaving this mission or are wary ol seeking 'ts jobs. Notwithstanding the new Commandant’s background, service in marine environmental and safety pursuits lately has been seen as a limiting factor in a Coast Guard career. The service thus enters the post-Cold War era with its environmental mission simmering on a back burner. The Coast Guard must immediately bring it back to the front and turn up the heat.
In addition to reshuffling internal priorities, the Coast Guard must seriously ponder its luture. At an absolute minimum, the outfit’s own leaders should choose what missions stay and what can be let go. 1 he alternative is to see forces outside the service make those choices lor them. Maintaining the status quo is not much of an option. Today’s course was tailored to a Cold War environment that no longer exists. Waiting to react to threats as they occur is a similarly risky and inefficient approach. A firehouse mentality only leads to more fires. The best strategy is to assume an active stance. The Coast Guard must set a bonafide agenda, define essential issues, and map out and articulate defensible positions.
In charting its course, the Coast Guard should begin by deciding which things are worth fighting for. Not every job it does has vital importance, but less-important tasks may nevertheless be worth retaining, as long as they don’t get the outfit in trouble. Small warriors, in particular, must be careful in choosing the right time to light. For the Coast Guard, this means steering clear of most battles that will pit it against the Navy. Only issues of survival will justify taking that kind of political risk. Ihe Coast Guard must therefore identify the missions that lie at its soul. Every one of those missions should logically and demonstrably be the Coast Guard’s alone. Moreover, each should possess genuine long-term potential. There is no point in protecting latter-day “buggy-whip” missions. These decisions must be reached through institutional prescience, not nostalgia.
The outcome of this process is not at all certain. Nevertheless, likely components already seem clear. In starkest relief are those features bom primarily of the Cold War’s conclusion. Maritime-law-enforcement work is a core Coast Guard function and the service must resist further encroachment there. Similarly, it should seek out, collect, and defend marine environmental protection missions. The Coast Guard would probably benefit from remaining a functional branch of the nation's armed forces. Consequently, the service should carve out a niche around small- unit LIC. On the other hand, the risks are too high to continue making MDZs a priority task, for they merely duplicate the Navy’s capabilities in a blue-water world.
The Coast Guard must next protect those missions worth hoarding by building a political bulwark around them. It must circle its wagons and get ready to fight hard for its turf. Public and congressional information campaigns must drive home the point that they are Coast Guard missions and that no other agency could hope to discharge them more efficiently. Internally, the Coast Guard must reprogram resources to ensure it can carry out core missions well, even at the cost of less-effective performance in the remaining jobs. It needs to draw up and polish a detailed defense plan that it can put into effect at the first sign of trouble. The service must decide what cards to play at each stage of the game. At a minimum, the Coast Guard should be wary, taking nothing for granted, and assuming hostile motives. Its troops need to be wide awake with weapons ready, leaning forward in their political foxholes.
A defensive stance is always a good idea, and it is absolutely essential at this turning point in history. The landscape is changing radically—both inside the U.S. government and around the world. Within the military establishment especially, the scramble is on for a strong foothold in the dawning new era. Internecine sniping already has occurred in the opening rounds. The Air Force
Wearing the Right Hat
By Lieutenant Edward O. Coates, U.S. Coast Guard
No military uniform is considered complete without a “cover.” Hats define duty status, denote rank, and confer authority. Coast Guard personnel often refer to their various duties as different “hats” they wear. The Coast Guard’s ability to wear several hats simultaneously is one of its main strengths. Its adaptability and resourcefulness have enabled the service to fill niches that no other government agency could fill. These unique capabilities have been the key to the Coast Guard’s viability and growth during the past 200 years. The danger in playing these roles so well is that we may forget who we really are under the hat.
During the past few years, the Coast Guard has been undergoing what the New Yorker, in its August 1989 issue, termed “an identity crisis.”1 This crisis concerns conflicting views of the relative importance of the Coast Guard’s various missions. Few within the Coast Guard would
disagree that, over the past decade, military readiness and law enforcement have become preeminent. As a result of the defense buildup and the drug epidemic, these two missions have eclipsed the Coast Guard’s other missions.
Internal conflict over roles is nothing new within the Coast Guard. Since 1915, when the humanitarian Lifesaving Service was combined with the antismuggling Revenue Cutter Service to form the Coast Guard, a delicate balance has been maintained between competing views of the Coast Guard’s mission.
As the service has absorbed additional agencies and responsibilities, this balance has become more complex. The Coast Guard’s wartime role as a part of the Navy adds another dimension. This apparent controversy is not necessarily divisive, however. The tradition of constantly reviewing and redefining its mission is part of what makes the Coast Guard such a dynamic organization.
In 1919, after the Coast Guard had performed duties as a part of the Navy in World War I, there was a move to incorporate the Coast Guard into the Navy permanently. In answering those who would disestablish the Coast Guard, the first Commandant, Admiral Bertholf, described his view of the Coast Guard’s mission:
“The Coast Guard exists for the particular and main purpose of performing duties which have no connection with a state of war, but which, on the contrary, are constantly necessary as peace functions. It is, of course, essentially an emergency service and it is organized along military lines because that sort of an organization best enables the Coast Guard to keep prepared as an emergency service, and by organization along military lines it is invaluable as an adjunct and auxiliary to the Navy
wants B-2 bombers to replace Navy carriers, the Army Wants to take over the Marines’ expeditionary work, and the Navy has suggested its ballistic missile submarines seek out Third World targets. The Coast Guard is hardly immune from this struggle, as the recent drug-war experience makes abundantly clear. Moreover, the battle may range far afield, where it isn’t expected. For example, the Pentagon recently noted it might consider a role in oil-spill eleanup work.3 Alarms should be ringing all over the Coast Guard at that bold suggestion. Nothing is sacred or safe, and the Coast Guard must get into its defensive crouch now. Today’s events are moving too fast and too wildly to wait any longer.
Today’s Coast Guard is already in motion toward tomorrow. Like any great venture, this trip involves risks and enormous rewards. Because both danger and prospect are so great, the Coast Guard must lay down its track with unusual precision. It can no longer safely steer its old course in such restricted waters. This channel is crowded and set about with shoals. Condition ZEBRA (buttoning UP the ship for maximum watertight integrity) should be set and the General Quarters navigation team called to the bridge. The end of the Cold War is the seminal event in the history of the modern Coast Guard. The transit may be hazardous, but it alone leads to the deep, open water.
The Coast Guard’s future starts now. Its transformation has already begun in this post-Cold War age. Its leaders literally have been offered the chance of a lifetime. The service can whither or thrive in the luturc. The choice is left up to its membership now. Each one of them is present at the creation of the new Coast Guard in which he will serve.
'Priscilla Painton, "Greening from the Roots Up," Time, 2.7 April 1990, p. 76. 2"Priorities," Newsweek, 2 April 1990. p. 5.
'Robert Bums, "Military adjusts its role for era of ‘violent peace,' ” The (Newport News) Daily Press, 5 March 1990, pp. Al, A5.
JDean Achcson. Present at the Creation (New York. W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1969), [unnumbered page at the beginning of the book].
Lieutenant Abel is a law specialist assigned to the staff of the Maintenance and Logistics Command, Atlantic. He won the 1990 Vincent Astor Memorial Leadership Essay Contest. He is the Coast Guard contributing editor to Proceedings.
star wws
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The Coast Guard appeared to be starting the decade off with a bang when the Mellon became the first Coast Guard cutter to fire a Harpoon missile; but such specialization is anathema to the service’s multimission concept.
. . . while peace time usefulness is a by-product of the Navy, it is the war time usefulness which is a by-product of the Coast Guard.”2
As Admiral Bertholf observed, many of the Coast Guard’s wartime duties are extensions of peacetime functions. Unique skills and equipment have made possible outstanding achievements in military conflicts. For instance, the Coast Guard has been responsible for wartime port security since World War I. In World War II, Coast Guard expertise in cold- weather operation and its fleet of ice-strengthened hulls made the service the logical choice for command of the Greenland Patrol. Its experience in small-boat handling has been tapped for amphibious assaults as well as river operations from North Africa to Vietnam. In each of these capacities, the Coast Guard has been able to perform vital functions and, at times, take the leading role by expanding upon experience gained through peacetime missions.
Similarly, the Coast Guard’s role as a law enforcement agency is complemented by other missions. Its effectiveness in this arena extends from the goodwill the service has developed with the boating public through performance of other non-law enforcement duties.
The Coast Guard’s efforts to protect life and property at sea lend credibility to its law enforcement role. Skills and equipment useful for other tasks are often applicable to law enforcement, and vice versa. Moreover, the very presence of a Coast Guard platform, even a buoy tender, can serve as a deterrent to would-be lawbreakers.
The Coast Guard’s multimission philosophy calls for interchangeability in activities and resources. Today, it has become increasingly difficult to follow this philosophy because of the growing sophistication of naval warfare and law enforcement. Those operating in these arenas depend increasingly on high-tech equipment and specialized personnel. However, specialization of equipment or personnel is anathema to the Coast Guard’s multimission concept. Two examples of the difficulties this dilemma presents are the Harpoon missile system and the Fast Coastal Interceptor.
In January 1990, the USCGC Mellon (WHEC-77) became the first Coast Guard ship to fire a Harpoon antiship missile. She was the first of 12 Coast Guard cutters scheduled to receive a naval weapons package that included the Phalanx Close-in Weapon System (CIWS). Installation of the 15,000-pound package requires modification of flight-deck approaches and towing configuration. The cost of the entire project will be $90 million, part of which will come