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Quad leaders to expand maritime security cooperation in face of PRC aggression

FORUM Staff

Australia, India, Japan and the United States will launch joint Coast Guard patrols in the Indo-Pacific in 2025. The enhanced security cooperation will improve interoperability and boost maritime safety, the leaders of the four member nations of the Quadrilateral partnership, or Quad, announced after their late September 2024 summit in the U.S.

The initial Quad-at-Sea Ship Observer Mission will entail personnel from each nation’s Coast guard patrolling on U.S. vessels. The aim is to counter illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the world’s leading perpetrator of IUU fishing, in which vessels violate other nations’ sovereignty by intruding into their exclusive economic zones. PRC-flagged vessels are the most common violators of the international rules, ranking worst among 152 countries in the 2023 IUU Fishing Index, a project of the consultancy group Poseidon Aquatic Resource Management and the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. About 25% of commercial fishing vessels suspected of using forced labor were Chinese-flagged, the U.S.-based Financial Transparency Coalition said in late 2023.

U.S. Coast Guard personnel prepare to board a fishing vessel during a patrol in the Eastern Pacific in 2022.
IMAGE CREDIT: U.S. COAST GUARD VIA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled the Coast Guard cooperative as part of a broader announcement calling for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific and condemning North Korea’s illegal missile program.

“As four leading maritime democracies in the Indo-Pacific, we unequivocally stand for the maintenance of peace and stability across this dynamic region, as an indispensable element of global security and prosperity,” the leaders stated.

“We strongly oppose any destabilizing or unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion. We condemn recent illicit missile launches in the region that violate U.N. Security Council resolutions. We express serious concern over recent dangerous and aggressive actions in the maritime domain. We seek a region where no country dominates and no country is dominated — one where all countries are free from coercion and can exercise their agency to determine their futures.”

The leaders also said they would expand the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness, a Quad initiative launched in 2022 that provides information in near-real time about maritime activity. The initiative will expand from Southeast Asia to the entire Indian Ocean region and will share technology to improve awareness through the new Maritime Initiative for Training in the Indo-Pacific “to enable our partners in the region to maximize tools provided … to monitor and secure their waters, enforce their laws, and deter unlawful behavior.”

The leaders also announced the launch of a Quad maritime legal dialogue to support the rules-based maritime order in the Indo-Pacific, and a logistics network for sharing airlift capacity during humanitarian aid and disaster relief operations.

The Quad’s focus on expanded maritime security comes as the PRC claims much of the South China Sea and areas in the East China Sea as its territory despite overlapping claims by nations including Brunei, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. An international tribunal ruled in 2016 that Beijing had no legal basis for its territorial assertion in the South China Sea, but the PRC has ignored that decision. It continues illegal, coercive, aggressive and dangerous tactics including ramming Philippine ships on resupply missions and bullying Taiwan, the self-governed island that Beijing threatens to annex by force.

“A new Quad maritime security initiative would send a very strong signal to China, that its maritime bullying is unacceptable, and that it would be met with coordinated action by this coalition of like-minded nations,” Lisa Curtis, an Asia policy expert at the U.S.-based Center for a New American Security think tank, told the Reuters news agency.

While the Quad leaders did not mention the PRC, they said they “are seriously concerned about the situation in the East and South China Seas. We continue to express our serious concern about the militarization of disputed features, and coercive and intimidating maneuvers in the South China Sea. We condemn the dangerous use of coast guard and maritime militia vessels, including increasing use of dangerous maneuvers. We also oppose efforts to disrupt other countries’ offshore resource exploitation activities. We reaffirm that maritime disputes must be resolved peacefully and in accordance with international law.”

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