Naval War College Review Volume 70 Article 5 Number 2 Spring 2017 Blunt Defenders of Sovereignty - The Rise of Coast Guards in East and Southeast Asia Lyle J. Morris Follow this and additional works at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review Recommended Citation Morris, Lyle J. (2017) "Blunt Defenders of Sovereignty - The Rise of Coast Guards in East and Southeast Asia," Naval War College Review: Vol. 70 : No. 2 , Article 5. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol70/iss2/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Morris: Blunt Defenders of Sovereignty - The Rise of Coast Guards in East BLUNT DEFENDERS OF SOVEREIGNTY The Rise of Coast Guards in East and Southeast Asia Lyle J. Morris hat is the role of coast guards in the realm of territorial disputes? Until ten years ago or so, few policy makers in East and Southeast Asia had to Wgrapple with this question, because regional navies, not coast guards, were the central actors asserting sovereignty in disputed areas.1 The decision by states, most notably China, to build up and employ coast guards as first-line defenders during territorial disputes has resulted in the following recent trends in the region: • Rather than employing coast guards as tools of regional peace, countries are using them, as opposed to naval forces, as aggressive instruments of state power to assert territorial claims—a new and destabilizing phenomenon in maritime territorial disputes.2 Lyle J.