One would think that a coast guard vessel has a fairly straight forward task: patrol the littoral waters surrounding the country.
However, it appears that the US coast guard, like the national guard, has a history of being used in imperial warfare. For instance, the USCGC Dallas, the largest coast guard ship currently in commission, has just made a pit stop in Georgia. Not the Peach State, but rather in the Black Sea near the Caucasus.
And while the federal government officially states that the ship is conducting humanitarian aid, based on its previous history (active in the Vietnam war theater as well as Kosovo in 1999), one could surmise that its appearance is more than coincidence.
To give the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt, it should be noted that numerous coast guard vessels are perpetually deployed in forward stations across the globe. However, this again illustrates the vast geographic expanse that the imperial state attempts to command and control.
Or are there a lot of Cuban refugees attempting to ford the Bosporus? Is the Dallas practicing hurricane relief techniques from tropical storm experts in Asia minor? Is someone really arguing that the USCG is actually protecting the shores of Corpus Christi and Mertyl Beach by tacking around in Russia’s bathtub?
See also:
Who Started Cold War II?
And None Dare Call It Treason
Is Not Western Hypocrisy Astonishing?
Does Bush Want War With Russia?
Your a complete idiot who does not understand the history of our Coast Guard and our roles and missions to enforce not only US law, but international law, and humanitarian efforts. You think the Coast Guard should be just guarding the coast? what about Katrina and Rita effort, what about brining hatians back to Haiti, what about high seas pirates, and the high seas driftneting that goes on over near China. What about all that? What about the coast guard works for the navy in a time of war, and the navy ordered us over there. If you hate bush, thats one thing, but get your facts straight, the coast guard has maintained a presence in forgein waters for years…Persian gulf, etc. liberal idiot. its this imperial nation that GAVE YOU the RIGHT (and me for that matter) the ability to write such an article, but your still an idiot.
“its this imperial nation that GAVE YOU the RIGHT”
WRONG! We are born with our rights. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are supposed to guarantee that they aren’t infringed upon. But the OP is correct. The USCG should be used to protect the coastal waters of the USA. In the Navy we used to call them “knee-deeps” since they weren’t supposed to go out deeper than that. The fact that they have been used/misused in other capacities in the past doesn’t negate the fact that they should stick to defending the coast. And before you start calling names, let me inform you that this country was founded as a constitutional republic. Unfortunately, we have a government that constantly oversteps its constitutional authority and butting it’s nose where it doesn’t belong to grow the “empire”.
The only point the writer is trying to make is that there is no reason for Coast Guard to be patroling foreign shores. I have hard time understanding your point but I suppose you’re entitled to it. Please in future be more civil in your arguments. Most importantly the nation didn’t give us the right to speak our minds we did. Many fought and died for that right. The moment we become grateful for what the powers that be decide is our god given rights is the day that we start to lose them. If you don’t believe me just read the patriot act sometime. Also if one wants to carry on intelligent discourse on topic please avoid insults. It is petty and childish. One last point what makes you assume he is a liberal, I happpen to agree with him and I am about as far right politically as you can get (i.e. Pat Buchannan is someone I aspire to).
Russia should then send its ships to enforce international laws in the US coastal waters!
That is an interesting idea. Once Hurricane Gustav hits the US coast Russia’s Border Guards should deploy their ships to US waters and start helping victims by delivering small and irrelevant aid in the form of water bottles to a potentially flooded city while not leaving.
The only idiot here is you Mr. Walker.
If you’re going to call somebody an idiot you should at least spell it “you’re” instead of “your”.. because then you might have a chance, however slight, that you won’t look like the bigger idiot.
Heck, you can’t possibly expect that much from a retard who can’t even spell “Johnny” correctly.
I Missed that one.
I thought it was ‘Wanker’ that he couldn’t spell.
Geez…take it easy ya’ll (or as we say in NYC: ‘youse-all’). This is the finest thing that the USCG does…the Dallas ain’t loaded with armament but it is loaded with humanitarian aid. How do I underline that??. Why the hell would ‘we’ send anything else in there? Has anyone seen the people suffering? This isn’t freepin Halliburton. The reason this old DC ‘liberal idiot’ joined the USCG was becuase it has an altruistic mind-set. Is that not obvious to anyone? Feck psuedo-comminist bull-dreck and SWAT-ification horse-pucky and the farkin politics…people need help and dam me if the Dallas doesn’t make me proud… Wilson USCG DC Adak, Gov Island, New Orleans
Oh yes, pure humanitarian aid. Then why a warship at all, which a Coast Guard Cutter happens to be in foreign waters?
Warship??? the cutter Dallas, is not really a warship. Its lightly armed but packed with aid supplies. If the US wanted to send a warship,they would of sent a strike group over there with a carrier, subs, and some DDG’s. Not a USCG Cutter.
Forgive me if I disagree. This “Coast Guard” Warship of yours is equipped with a 76mm cannon that can hit air and land targets from 15 to 20km away(it can attack Abkhazia quite easily). It has a massive electronic warfare capacity with at least 10 different radio communications, satellite communications, and radar systems. My opinion this is some kind of Intelligence ship disguised as a “Coast Guard” ship, Russia does not build Border Patrol ships this size with extreme amounts of un-necessary systems, this surpasses the main mission of this type of ship.
And why is your “humanitarian aid” have to be covered with military covers and resembles a weapons shipment?
http://s54.radikal.ru/i144/0808/b8/c090ec6d294f.jpg
Yes it is equiped with a 76mm cannon and a mk 15. Both of which are for defense. And yes it is equiped with radio communications. Not for spying, or intel. I should know with being in the CG. You damn hippie
I am not a hippie(try finding a Soviet “hippie”). In Vietnam your Coast Guard used its Gun Armament against Vietnamese targets not for “defense”.
The Coast Guard Cutter Dallas unloads its humanitarian cargo at Batumi–”38 tons of bottled water, baby food, soap and other supplies”.
Russian deputy minister: “This humanitarian aid could be bought at any flea market.”
The Russians still don’t understand US and Neo-Con PR.
Can’t say that I blame them.
Another interesting dimension–the Bush and Cheney administration seems to be doing much more for Georgia in the way of “humanitarian aid” than the same adminsitration did for New Orleans.
Perhaps Louisiana should declare itself independent and join NATO.
This ship is the target of both Russian Navy and Shore Anti-Navy artillery. There are hundreds of very advanced missiles. One wrong step and these USCG ships may share the fate of Georgian “Navy”, which was all destroyed recently, most of it from the shore by Russian tanks.
Now, is the US really ready for a global nuclear conflict?
Or is the US ready to REALLY loose face?
Now, do I really want a global nuclear conflict? I mean - it’s better to die standing then live kneeing - I’m not sure if many people in the US share that idea, but in Russia they do.
Tell me, Johnny, why there is a distinction between the navy and the coast guard? Could it be that one is supposed to be dealing with domestic issues, while the other is supposed to wage war? Or do the two services exist just to give high ranking officers fleets to manage? Sort of an aquatic redundancy of force project to keep old navy guys busy.
You obviously are named Johnny Walker because that is what you drank while writing what you wrote. It isn’t a question about Liberal vs. Conservative…it’s common sense! What would George Washington and the Founding Fathers say if they knew the Coast Guard, and for that matter ANY AMERICAN agency was involved in overseas operations of imperialism?
It baffles me that people are PROUD to be Americans and then forget the fundamentals of how and why America was built the way it was. American foreign policy should be exactly that–not catered for some client states. What the US is now doing is no different that what the USSR did…creating client states and patrolling and arming them.
This country did not give us our rights, as the Constitution so states we are born with them. But it is nice to see the Coast Guard cheerleader (Johnny Walker) showing his true Gestapo mentality. You see folks when the Department of Homeland Security was created, the floodgates were open to allow these closet thugs like Johnny Walker to come out and think of new ways for them to benefit from abuse of power.
The ‘imperial nation gave all of us the right’ to free speech? Interesting argument. Bogus, but interesting in a lunk-headed sort of way.
The US Coast Guard, as many don’t know, was deeply involved in the war in Vietnam.
That that effort, and the others mentioned above, were ill-conceived is true enough, but the reasons why are complex.
One reason that has not been widely mentioned is that the Coast Guard is a peculiar entity, a hybrid of police, patrol, and custom functions, mainly involving civilian vessels, internally and externally, and with some small military force and duties.
This is difficult to talk of without developing a whole new vocabulary. To say that the Coast Guard has become increasingly “militarized” would not be quite right or easily understandable, but it has become increasingly made a department of the Navy, for example, both in the training of its higher officers and in some of its functions.
An analogy would be the senseless “SWATification” of local US police forces during and after Vietnam.
In this context, what has happened to the Coast Guard is another subset of two trends, increasingly converging to a singularity, that I distinguish as the “militarization of police” and the “policification of the military.”
Is that Johnny Walker Red since you are in favor of protecting pseudo-Communist nations rather than our own ? The US Coast Guard has no more business being in Eurasia any more than this knucklehead from Texarkana chasing beer trucks across state lines:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=43946521
The Great One! With pencil mustache looking like an overweight Wayne Newton, or the latest Godfather one ran into (in a Board Room of all places).
On the topic of “militarization of police” and “policification of military”, which pertains indirectly to the Coast Guard, it occurred to one visiting the link that were there any historian with the requisite experience and sensitivity, it might be useful task to chronicle how police and military functions have been so long and closely conflated.
This essay might range from the use of the US Army on the frontier to the number of veterans of the World Wars who, for want of anything else to do, and sometimes experienced as MP’s or with Occupation duties, but more often not, went into police work.
But what is the connection really?
Is the hidden eidos in the American use of “force”, as in “Armed Forces” (military) or “on the force”(member of the police) more subversive than it might seem on the surface?
A peculiarly American aspect, however, might be more technological and concrete–in the Left and Right apprehension of firearms as something eminently military, or as a technology somehow most adeptly mastered by soldiers, who thus become somehow models for police.
All of this is mythology, even viewed from the perspective of American history and the Constitution–a mythology recently acted out, in different if equally nasty fashion, both at Waco and Ruby Ridge.
But if the Coast Guard is increasingly used wrongly abroad, how does an outfit like Blackwater so facilely persuade the unwary that the special “military experience” of their contractors has pertinence to training local American police forces?
In fact the Blackwater mercenaries, and Prince himself, are as incompetent and vicious at training State’s supposed diplomatic “bodyguards” as they are training private security guards and local police.
The most important resource psychologically of the local policeman or sheriff has never been the gun, or the uniform, but is, and has always been, the connection to the local community, with the badge as a sign of that connection, not of some self-important flunky at the bottom of an official “quasi-military” hierarchy that somehow reaches upward to the Federal Government and the President himself as final an ultimate “Commander-in-Chief”.
The American coast guard is part of the American armed forces and as such can be used in any way that the armed forces command sees fit. So to say that their mandate is only to guard the littoral waters of America is not anywhere near the truth. Their mandate is being an armed forced obeying orders. That is about it. On what the American coast guard is doing in the Black Sea, one can only give the answer that the Russians are giving, which is who cares. They are an armed unit of the enemy, and that is what counts. In a conflict they will shoot and will be shot back at.
Perhaps it is time to take America as it is, not as it was, which never was by the way. America was officially a racist apartheid country until some fifty years ago. Most people on this site talk of American imperialism as if it is something relatively new and it started with Wilson or Roosevelt or communism pushed it into becoming an empire. That is not true at all. The American central government first practiced the art of imperialism in its own territory. Pat Buchanan is right when he traces America’s imperialism back to the American civil war. Some states, essentially sovereign countries wanted to go their own way and the American central government made them remain in the fold by force. Then the American central government started to look outwards and became what it is today. Interestingly the defeated states aspired to attack the countries south of America to expand their colonies. So, it would not have mattered in anyway who which side won. It was going to be empire one way or another. After all why give up the way of life that had given them America in the first place. And they have been at it ever since.
If you want the coast guard to operate in American littoral waters, you will need an imminent danger right next to your littoral waters. Even then there will be someone who will shout, “What is my Atlantic fleet doing in my littoral waters”.
Very precisely, you are wrong. The United States Coast Guard, though part of the Armed Forces, has special statutory authority to operate domestically, among other things exempting it from posse comitatus legislation.
“authority to operate domestically”
Illusions dear, namely that other parts of the armed forces do not have “authority” to operate domestically. At best they will get authority and at worst they will just claim it before you can say Jeb Bush. It is the same all over the world. Why should America be an exception? Because Americans are exceptional? :)
Not illusions at all, dearie–if in fact distinctions, once observed, more and more obfuscated by the Right Wing, and by many on the Left as well.
At any rate, the following:
The American coast guard is part of the American armed forces and as such can be used in any way that the armed forces command sees fit.
is wrong. You can avoid that point in whatever fashion, Neo-Conesque or Trotskyite, you choose.
I am not avoiding any point. It is you that is doing that. The American coast guard ships are and have been all over the world. They do not have a mandate to do that? Who says? You?
“in whatever fashion, Neo-Conesque or Trotskyite”,
Now you are loosing your religion. Chill.
The US Coast Guard is governed by different statutory authority than the rest of the “Armed Forces.”
Your statement is wrong on its face.
You compound ignorance with stupid mulishness. Or is that an insult to mules?
“You compound ignorance with stupid mulishness. Or is that an insult to mules?”
Now you really are loosing it.
This if from wikipedia:
“The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is a branch of the United States armed forces and one of seven uniformed services. In addition to being a military branch at all times, it is unique among the armed forces in that it is also a maritime law enforcement agency (with jurisdiction both domestically and in international waters) and a federal regulatory agency. It is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security.
As one of the five armed forces and the smallest armed service of the United States, its stated mission is to protect the public, the environment, and the United States economic and security interests in any maritime region in which those interests may be at risk, including international waters and America’s coasts, ports, and inland waterways.”
The capital letters are for your thick head:
AS ONE OF FIVE ARMED FORCES
ITS STATED MISSION IS TO PROTECT… SECURITY INTERESTS IN ANY MARITIME REGION … INCLUDING INTERNATIONAL WATERS … .
“The five uniformed services that make up the Armed Forces are defined in 10 U.S.C. § 101(a)(4):
“ The term “armed forces” means the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. ”
The Coast Guard is further defined by 14 U.S.C. § 1:
“ The Coast Guard as established January 28, 1915, shall be a military service and a branch of the armed forces of the United States at all times. The Coast Guard shall be a service in the Department of Homeland Security, except when operating as a service in the Navy.”
THE COAST GUARD SHALL BE A SERVICE IN THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, EXCEPT WHEN OPERATING AS A SERVICE IN THE NAVY.
You are very dull. The point is not that the Coast Guard is not part of the “Armed Forces” but that the Coast Guard has special statutory authority that distinguishes it, and its proper uses, from the rest of the “Armed Forces”.
The Armed Forces are not homogeneous, as you aver.
You obviously did not know that, having gone to Wikipedia, now you do–so, naturally, you argue that you knew all along and change the point to something else.
Very boring and Neo-Conesque indeed.
Eugene Costa,
Anyone who goes to Wikipedia is neo-conesque? Brilliant. Of course I am an Iranian, and you are American, and you are supposed to know better about USCG. Yet, it is obvious that you do not. As Wikipedia says, and you are free to correct them, USGC is unique in the way that it has law enforcement duties within the American borders as well. That is in addition to the mandate it has as part of the armed forces of America. Still, it is part of the armed forces of America and it can be used in exactly the same way that the rest of the armed forces are used.
Instead of resorting to insults, try to get your facts right. So far what you have said points to nothing but universal stupidity, neo-conesque or libertarianesque or antiwaresque or whatever.
Ali, you cite Wikipedia that the Coast Guard is an agency of the Department of Homeland Security. That means it’s not in the Department of Defense.
Historically and until the formation of DHS, the Coast Guard was an agency of the Department of Treasury. Until Vietnam, it was not much closer to the military than the Merchant Marine, which I’m sure followed military orders when under convoy during WW II.
Wikipedia is a valuable resource, though varied and hinging much on who writes the articles.
It is also useful for quick reminders or refreshers online.
The Neo-Conesque part is not knowing what you are talking about and changing your point in retrospect. Please consult above–did not I say that the USCG is part of the Armed Forces?
That is not the point at issue. You put the USCG into one category, “Armed Force obeying orders”, and conclude that is all it is and it is the same as any of the rest of the Armed Forces.
That is not accurate. The Coast Guard is governed by different statutes from those that govern the other US armed forces, and has different functions, including many civilian and domestic ones that are not armed, or only incidentally armed.
Abroad you are correct–the USCG acts more and more like an adjunct of the U.S. Navy.
Domestically, however, what is called the “Coast Guard” in the United States deals mainly with civilians, and it was not formed, for example, to make war, offensive or defensive.
This is likely very different from what the Iranians consider a “coast guard”.
But this is a problem across the board. Among the Germans, for example, the Border Guards are military and part of the armed forces, as I recall, while in the US the Border Patrol are police, though here again the Right Wing, and some of the left, have tried to militarize that function too and also use the military to patrol the border.
Incidentally the Coast Guard Cutter sent to Georgia, which as just reported avoided Poti and landed at a different smaller port, was likely dispatched mainly for PR reasons, exactly because, among Americans, the Coast Guard has almost a “civilian” flavor, and is seen as not an arm of war.
How the Russians see it, or the Iranians, is a different story, and it is all PR nonsense, for benefit perhaps of both the Georgians and the Americans, in terms of support or provocation.
An interesting point–dispatching a Coast Guard Cutter to Georgia, which some Americans see as diplomatically less provocative, certainly plays on the ambiguity of “warship” in English, which in one understanding the Coast Guard vessels are not–that is, they were not designed to wage war, offensive or defensive, nor even for logistics, but for domestic coastal patrol, among other things.
Abroad however, and internationally, and because part of the US Armed Forces, they remain warships in any sensible meaning that can be given that term.
So Bush and Cheney and the Neo-Cons, or perhaps the U.S. Navy, or perhaps Chertoff in his position as Proconsul of All Borders, provokes with a warship that they tell the Russians is not a warship, but is still a warship in the Georgians’ eyes.
The nonsensical game continues with both losses and gains in translation.
As it says, Coast Guard is an agency of the Department of Homeland Security when it is not operating as a service in the Navy. The Navy Service was not created with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. It was there. Or just look at the military adds on American TV. It always includes the Coast Guard. It always has.
Please note that I am in no way suggesting that what America is doing is right. Interfering in the affairs of other countries in the world with bogus claims of support for freedom and democracy is the root cause of the problems that we see around the world. America claims that it has an interest in controlling the world and dictating its will on the rest of the world. Well, theoretically that can be anyone’s greatest interest. I am sure, deep in their hearts, all the people of say Haiti or any other country believe that if they had the world in their pocket, their interests would be much better served. Of course they never mention that publicly, as no one else in the world does. Yet America, along with some natural born thieves like UK, is such vile creature of fortune that it insists that that desire can actually have a material equivalence in the real world and hence claiming it with such vehemence that there inevitably will be some like Sakashvilli who actually fall into the trap of believing it.
Coast Guard or Navy or any other American ship, should not be in the Black Sea, preparing the next act of the tragedy that America is inflicting on the world.
“it is unique among the armed forces in that it is also a maritime law enforcement agency (with jurisdiction both domestically and in international waters)”
Question: who authorizes its jurisdiction in international waters?
The U.S. “coast guard” like all other branches of the militray-industrial complex, just wants to get in on the action and get its share of the pie. Heaven forbid it doesn’t grow and expand like all the other services. If I were the Russians I would be checking those ships cargos just to MAKE SURE it really is humanitarian aid (not that the U.S. government would ever lie, of course)
typical liberal argument with no merit. Of course it gave us the right for free speech, you think the bill of rights existed when adam and eve were born, we were not born with rights, we were not born with the capacity to make the correct decision based on experience. those rights we have now were fought for by our forefathers…remember that from history? or did your professor tell you how to think? Secondly, you do not even know what a constitutional right is…your not born with the right to drive a car…
Your ignorance is showing, including ignorance of the Constitution members of the military are sworn by oath to protect.
The US Constitution is unique in acknowledging that the rights of its citizens precede the right of any government to restrict them.
“Freedom of speech”, for example, is not a right accorded by government, as it is in the Canadian or European Bills of “Rights”.
It is a pre-existing right that the Federal Government (now any unit of government) cannot legally abridge.
Johnny Walker,
If I was not born with it, please exlain how I can get it from somebody else? Whether the Bill of rights existed at the time of Adam and Eve, or at the time of Lucy the Ape-Eve or whenever, is irrelevant to whether a right is innate–in political or ethical terms innate means knowable a priori. In somewhat different terms it involves a theory of axiomatic knowledge. I am doubting you know what this means. Try reading Kant or Aristotle or Ludwig von Mises or Murray Rothbard (or hundreds of others). These rights were fought for by our forefathers? Okay, so you admit that these rights existed in somebody’s mind before they were fought for? You are assuming that they fought for something (our rights) that they had already imagined in their minds and left to us. But if they fought for them did they learn them from elsewhere. And from where? And if they didn’t learn them from elsewhere, the discovery of the idea of rights must have had an endogenous factor. If they learned them from somebody else, where did the somebody else get them?
Along the same lines, you say that we aren’t born being able to make correct decisions. First, this is not the same as asking if a thing is innate. There can be innate processes or facts which only appear in the course of development (ever hear of puberty?). Second, if we need your Neo-con fascistic government to teach us right from wrong, where did the great leader aquire the knowledge of right and wrong? Did he have it revealed to him on a mountaintop? As with all poitical theories that deny the reality of natural rights Neo conservatism simply places them implicitly in some elect group of leaders, such as the Leader or the Proletariat, who then are given the authority to do whatever they want. It makes me think of one of the myths of Zeus raping a young woman and then proclaiming, “it is good”. Oh, and by the way, I am certainly not a ‘liberal’.
Our forefather didn’t fight to obtain our rights. They fought to defend them. They were ethically theirs from the get-go.
Beyond that, the fact that our forefathers fought to defend their rights before there was a Constitution or even a Declaration of Independence certainly demonstrates that our rights were not bestowed by the largesse of some government. They existed before the government, and the government was created with the express purpose of preserving them.
When it is said that brave people died to protect our freedom of speech, it should always be understood that these brave people were usually fighting their own government at the time.
As far as the Coast Guard goes, they have a humorous way of looking at their own role - The Coast Guard works for the Treasury in peace time and when war comes it serves as the nucleus for the Navy.
What does any of this have to do with the needless presence of the “U.S coast” guard in Georgia? Should it be called the Georgian coast guard?
“your not born with the right to drive a car”
John Yoo spells better, but you have obviously studied in the same school.
The authority of any government to license “driving an auto” is complex, and hinges mainly on the use of public roads. However interpreted, one does have a right to drive on private property with permission of the owner.
Moreover, whether one is born with it or not, one has a pre-existing right to ride a horse or a burro or bicycle or scooter or walk or rollerskate or skateboard or ski or hop skip and jump, again limited only by regulations that apply to public and private ways.
Your contortions suggest a particularly virulent and unsubtle variety of the usual lunatic Neo-Conservative sophistry and ignorance.
“your not born with the right to drive a car”
Actually you are. It is just the right can be taken away permanently or temporarily. That is the whole idea of the law. It does not give rights, it takes away rights. Sometimes it gives them back, and most of the time it does not as in the case of killing and stealing which are the most obvious examples. More laws, less rights. That is also the whole idea of a society. To think that the rights are “given” to people by the law is totally immoral, as if those rights were the property of the government in the first place.
Merely as an aside, and for the benefit of those who might follow, rather than cling to some misminded ideological formula like a teddy bear, a similar misunderstanding is under Hamilton’s argument against the Bill of Rights.
Hamilton argued, in my opinion disingenuously, that in acknowledging this or that right, the Constitution would in effect be disallowing others not delineated.
I say “disingenously”, because I suspect Hamilton’s real intent was actually to make sure no pre-existing rights were acknowledged constitutionally, specifically or generally.
Even if not treated specifically by the Constitution–which it is–the absurdity of Hamilton’s reasoning is clear, to wit, that in putting up a sign, “Keep Off The Grass”, one is actively authorizing someone to burglarize one’s house.
Johnny once again your ignorance is showing through.
What exactly do you mean by the following
we were not born with the capacity to make the correct decision based on experience.
I suppose we weren’t but then again we grow and mature with the guidance of our parents and community. In the end we are all born free, unfortunately some grow up and choose to be slaves.
“If I were the Russians I would be checking those ships cargos just to MAKE SURE it really is humanitarian aid (not that the U.S. government would ever lie, of course)”
Why don’t you simply ask the Coast Guard? They’re straightforward about what they do.
The Russians can’t demand to inspect cargo delivered from a warship because of a very old principle of international law that states that a warship carries the sovereignty of its nation with it and it cannot be stopped or searched without its consent. After the Kudrikas incident of the 1970s, where two Coast Guard admirals were Article 15′ed for letting Russians take a defector of a cutter off the U.S. coast, it’s not very likely. Knowing the Commandant, Admiral Thad Allen as I do by reputation and by personal meeting, the response wouldn’t be “No” but “HELL NO!”
Now, why would a Coast Guard cutter be in the Black Sea? Simple: the Black Sea is in international waters. The Russians may wish it were a private lake, but their sovereignty stops 12 nautical miles outside the Russian coast, and the Russian coast doesn’t extend to Georgia. The cutters of the U.S. Coast Guard go everywhere as part of their missions, which include law enforcement on the high seas, marine safety, and disaster relief among others.
A Coast Guard cutter is a specialized vessel, with experts on aids to navigation, harbor maintenance and safety, and medicine aboard. It would be a good ship to go on a humanitarian relief mission. Since the Georgian coast guard facilities at Poti were systematically destroyed by the Russians who still occupy the port, the technical aid of the Dallas will help reestablish that nation’s coast guard facilities.
The Dallas is one of the 12 370-foot Treasury class cutters, which has the range to go worldwide. Most Coast Guard cutters have shorter range; the 110-foot cutters in the Persian Gulf were piggybacked on other ships. Even smaller ones are no bigger than 66 feet.
Another feature is that a Coast Guard cutter doesn’t have the firepower of a Naval vessel of the same size; it’s less of a provocation.
Russian warships have sailed to within the limits of U.S. territorial waters, and Russian planes have flown near (but not over) American territory. We let them because they have the right to go there. They have to concede us the right to go anywhere we like in international waters. If they don’t, the race for the Arctic is going to get very, very, interesting.
The Russians can easily declare all of Georgia a war zone if they chose, and according to accepted canons of international and diplomatic practice.
They were attacked first, and all that is in place is a cease fire.
Some of the leveler heads in the USN seem to realize this.
Shouldn’t the U.S. coast guard be “guarding” the U.S. coast and not the Black sea?
Marcuse, a new type of Marxist, was a brilliant and prophetic thinker. As early as 1964, for example, he was using the term “Neo-Conservative”, though for a slightly wider grouping than what the term is identified with now.
In One Dimensional Man he examined, by way of analyzing acronyms, the change from conceptual to operational that occurs when, for example, North Atlantic Treaty Organization becomes repeated and concretized as NATO.
Doesn’t the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have something to do with the “North Atlantic”? NATO as an operational entity does not, observed Marcuse–it simply becomes what it does.
The United States Coast Guard? My dear fellow, you are so old-fashioned. Don’t you see, it’s strictly NATO and the USCG in the Black Sea.
With trepidation I drag my non-expert opinion into this, but the following seems likely to me:
a) We already have a blue water unit for such things as sailing into the Black Sea: it’s called the Navy.
b) The reason the Coast Guard is called the Coast Guard is because typically it’s meant to guard our coasts. We can reasonably believe that authorization to enter international waters is merely to allow the Coast Guard to intercept any incoming threat before it reaches American waters, not to set up skirmish lines halfway around the world.
c) Relatedly, just as the Constitution’s “common defence” only applies to America and not the world, so too it seems likely that the “Coast” in Coast Guard refers only to our borders, not the world’s.
d) Past abuses of the Coast Guard, like previous tramplings of the Constitution or the robbing of banks, do not justify ongoing abuses or crimes.
But what the hey, why not? The National Guard fights a half world away, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which should have dissolved by 1991 has spread itself across the world in true bureaucratic resolve, so why not have the Coast Guard filling an overseas military mission too? When the empire calls, everyone should respond.
What an egotistical pile of rubbish.
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What the hell are they doing in our waters, that is my question. America is 7,000km to the west.
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Then say hello to the fishes.
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The Black Sea is under the strict jurisdiction of the nations of the Black Sea, under specific international agreements only Russia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, and Georgia have a right to navigate the Black Sea as they choose, all others must state their intentions, and must keep all ships under 45,000 tons. Any foreign ship in the Black Sea longer than 21 days is in violation of the local maritime laws and can face action by the local maritime powers(this includes Russia).
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You understand the word “hypocrisy”? WHO MADE THE US OVERLORD OF THE PLANET? YOUR SOVEREIGNTY ALSO ENDS 12 NAUTICAL MILES OFF YOU COAST, YOU ARE IN OUR WATERS. AND SINCE THE US HAS NO INTERNATIONAL JURISDICTION IT CAN KINDLY GET THE HELL OUT OF OUR WATERS.
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I REPEAT, GEORGIA IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.
One can argue that the Russians were not attacked first; the Georgian actions were on the territory of Georgia. I won’t argue that it isn’t a war zone, though.
However, the Russians have not declared a blockade of Georgian ports nor of Georgian airspace, nor do they have the ships to constructively enforce a blockade. This means that neutral vessels (and the U.S. is a neutral in this war in the sense that we are not shooting Russians or Georgians) can visit the ports of either belligerent.
True enough.
But the Russians don’t have to declare a blockade, though they could. Neutrals in territorial waters of the other belligerent, Georgia, are subject to boarding and search. And certainly their cargoes are subject to search when then are unloaded in port.
The Georgians attacked Osetia in a sneak attack and against an agreement they signed with the Russians and the Osetians.
In the process they killed, not only a large number of civilians, but Russian peace keepers who were there by formal agreement.
That is a legitimate cause of war by international standards.
One seriously doubts that, whatever Bush and Cheney and the more lunatic of the NeoCons want to do, the saner heads in the USN or in the Coast Guard want to endanger US neutral status by aiding one of the belligerents.
THERE IS NOTHING TO ARGUE!
Georgia’s US supported, armed, trained, and led Military ATTACKED AND KILLED RUSSIAN CITIZENS IN SOUTH OSSETIA!
Is that difficult for you to understand?
Ships? Who the hell do you think you are dealing with? Who needs ships? You enter the waters off Georgia and you are sunk by Coastal Missile Forces.
DON’T EVEN TRY TO PRETEND THE US, WHICH IS THE DIRECT BENEFACTOR OF MR. SAAKASHVILI, IS “NEUTRAL”!
The Russians have to control the port to search the ships. They can’t search a warship without the consent of the ship’s government. Period. They can search civilian vessels, and they have already seized military equipment at Poti belonging to the US (Hummers) as contraband of war. However, the U.S. already outguns the Black Sea Fleet, even considering the Dallas isn’t as well armed as the McFaul.
The Georgians might have started the war, but the Russian response is incommersurate.
U.S. already outguns the Black Sea Fleet
Your definition of “outguns” is obsolete, along with much of the USN surface fleet.
The Russians do control Poti.
The two belligerents have agreed to a cease fire only.
No warship of a neutral need be allowed in the territorial waters of the other belligerent if they don’t consent to boarding and search, and certainly not into a port controlled by the first belligerent.
“Incommensurate response”? One will not counter with analogies, like the Southrons firing on Fort Sumter, but the phrase, as with so much in this administration’s cant, does not have much meaning, diplomatic or otherwise.
One might inquire, however, how it squares up with the “preemptive” so popular with the Bush administration and the Israelis, among others.
One may have to add it to one’s list of trendy “official sounding” legalese and other nonsense, like, also recently, “aspirational”.
Blame the phrase “incommensurate response” on all the reading of international law texts I have been following; it’s always been an interest of mine. The Georgians were idiots, but the Russians could have restored status quo ante b