Introduction
In September 2025, the U.S. State Department announced more than $55 million in new maritime law enforcement funding for Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Pacific Islands, and maritime South Asian countries, underscoring the Indo-Pacific region’s growing demand for practical, law-enforcement–focused maritime cooperation. Southeast Asian agencies face intensifying challenges—illegal fishing, trafficking, irregular maritime movement, and frequent encounters with coercive maritime forces—that require the kind of training, authority, and operational approach the U.S. Coast Guard is uniquely positioned to provide. Within the U.S. government, both the Department of Defense and the Department of State increasingly view the Coast Guard as the most effective instrument for strengthening maritime governance in the Indo-Pacific, given its non-escalatory posture and law-enforcement expertise.
Yet this demand is growing at the same time the Coast Guard itself is undergoing major organizational and strategic change. In May 2025, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced her intent to “revolutionize” the service through a sweeping modernization and readiness campaign. Her Force Design 2028 framework, now being implemented under Acting Commandant Admiral Luday, emphasizes restoring domestic readiness, strengthening Western Hemisphere operations, and reorienting the service’s limited resources toward missions that directly support DHS’s homeland security mandate. These shifts reinforce the longstanding structural tension at the heart of U.S. maritime engagement in the Indo-Pacific: DoD, State, and regional partners want more Coast Guard involvement, but DHS prioritizes missions that do not benefit from expanded overseas training and engagement.
As DHS reshapes the Coast Guard to meet domestic and Western Hemisphere demands, the gap between regional expectations and U.S. capacity is likely to widen. The consequence for Southeast Asian partners is clear: even as interest in U.S. Coast Guard training increases, availability will remain constrained and sporadic. Understanding how these internal U.S. policy changes interact with interagency preferences is essential for regional maritime agencies planning for the remainder of the decade.
Regional Demand
The demand for maritime law enforcement training in Southeast Asia is both longstanding and intensifying. While high-profile naval exercises and freedom of navigation operations draw headlines, the day-to-day challenges faced by regional maritime agencies stem from illicit fishing, trafficking, smuggling, and routine law-enforcement encounters in crowded or contested waters. These pressures are particularly acute in the South China Sea, where law-enforcement decisions—documentation, inspection, presence, and escalation control—often matter more than military maneuvering.
U.S. investments reflect the same trend. Since 2017, Washington has provided $136 million to Indo-Pacific maritime law enforcement partners, focusing on operational capacity, evidence-handling, interdiction, and the protection of commercial shipping lanes. The Coast Guard has become a central part of this ecosystem, with its shiprider agreements described by the State Department as “a proven success and in high demand among international partners in the region.” Southeast Asian states consistently request greater access to U.S. Coast Guard training, boarding demonstrations, maritime law modules, and practical enforcement exercises. When Coast Guard units are available, the value is immediately apparent: Philippine operations become more disciplined and resilient in gray-zone encounters; Vietnam integrates new governance standards; Indonesia and Malaysia improve operational coordination.
Interagency Dynamics
From a strategic and operational standpoint, the Department of Defense and the State Department increasingly view the Coast Guard as the United States’ most effective tool for maritime governance engagement in Southeast Asia. Both DoD and State are motivated by the strategic environment created by China’s assertive activities in the South China Sea: They view stronger Southeast Asian maritime law‑enforcement agencies as essential to helping partners resist coercion and uphold internationally recognized rights.
DoD planners see the service as uniquely capable of delivering non‑escalatory presence and practical law‑enforcement expertise—functions that traditional naval forces cannot credibly perform. MSI, FMF, and IMET funding reflects DoD’s intent to improve partners’ maritime law-enforcement, interdiction, and domain-awareness capabilities—areas where the Coast Guard, rather than the Navy, offers the relevant authorities and operational experience. The Navy can project power, but it cannot easily conduct routine boardings, inspections, or maritime governance training without signaling military intent.
The State Department operates from a similar perspective. Much of State’s Indo‑Pacific assistance portfolio—from INCLE-funded maritime law enforcement support to Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement’s professionalization programs and shiprider cooperation—requires the legal authorities and operational experience the Coast Guard provides. The September 2025 announcement of more than $55 million in maritime law enforcement funding reflects this logic: the activities funded require Coast Guard trainers, not naval forces. State’s regional diplomacy also consistently reinforces this emphasis, identifying maritime governance, IUU fishing enforcement, interdiction skills, and operational professionalism as central pillars of a resilient Indo‑Pacific—areas in which the Coast Guard is the United States’ preferred implementer. State and DoD see empowering these agencies as a way to help regional partners respond confidently to China’s growing pressure in disputed waters, without escalating toward naval confrontation.
By contrast, the Department of Homeland Security does not view foreign maritime capacity building as central to its mission. When DoD trains foreign militaries, it strengthens partners in ways that advance DoD objectives—deterrence, burden‑sharing, and operational readiness. When the Coast Guard trains Southeast Asian agencies, the resulting improvements do not translate into DHS mission gains. These activities do not materially affect U.S. border security, Western Hemisphere counternarcotics operations, domestic search and rescue, or port security. For DHS leadership, Indo‑Pacific capacity building is beneficial but ultimately ancillary.
The Structural Mismatch: DHS Ownership and Its Consequences
The Coast Guard’s placement under the Department of Homeland Security fundamentally shapes its mission set and operational availability. While Indo-Pacific maritime assistance is funded by DoD and the State Department, the service itself answers to DHS, which must prioritize homeland missions—border security, search and rescue, counter-narcotics operations, and the management of Western Hemisphere contingencies. These priorities consistently override opportunities for Indo-Pacific engagement.
Authority structures reinforce this dynamic. The Coast Guard lacks a dedicated statutory mechanism for sustained overseas engagement, relying instead on external authorities such as IMET, FMF, Section 333, and INL accounts. These mechanisms fund training but do not provide the service with new operational authorities, new billets, or an Indo-Pacific posture. Even when funding exists, DHS operational requirements may leave insufficient cutters, personnel, or deployable training teams. This creates a persistent bureaucratic contradiction: DoD and State can provide money, but only DHS can provide the Coast Guard.
New Coast Guard Leadership: Force Development 2028 and a Western Hemisphere Turn
The Coast Guard’s Force Design 2028 framework, announced in May and striving to “revolutionize” the service, sharpens this contradiction. In outlining priorities for rebuilding readiness and modernizing the service, Force Design 28 emphasizes the need to stabilize the workforce, recapitalize aging assets, and concentrate operational energy on the Western Hemisphere. It highlights “persistent and emergent Western Hemisphere threats,” the need for “restoring readiness in high-demand domestic mission sets,” and the requirement to address infrastructure shortfalls that complicate routine homeland operations. Foreign engagement is rarely mentioned, and Indo-Pacific activities are not featured. Force Design 2028 explicitly prioritizes domestic readiness and Western Hemisphere operations; as resources tighten, Indo-Pacific engagement will likely be one of the easiest mission areas to defer
Public statements by Acting Commandant Admiral Luday, who is also the administration’s nominee for leadership of the Coast Guard, reinforce the posture of focus on Western Hemisphere affairs. His messaging has centered on restoring domestic readiness, addressing personnel gaps, and improving service resilience in the face of surging migration and narcotics flows in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. These priorities align with DHS’s strategic direction, not DoD’s or State’s. Luday and Noem are not opposed to Indo-Pacific engagement—they simply are not structurally incentivized to prioritize it.
Anticipated shifts in the forthcoming National Defense Strategy may reinforce this trend. The strategy is widely expected to place greater emphasis on Western Hemisphere affairs and addressing “vulnerabilities” of the U.S. homeland, as the leaked interim guidance did. If this happens, DHS will have even more reason to concentrate on near-home missions, avoiding international training missions far from U.S. coasts. This would further narrow the already limited bandwidth for Indo-Pacific training deployments.
One key development by Secretary Noem indicates a possible trend toward an expanded role for the Coast Guard: In May, Secretary Noem proposed the creation of a Coast Guard Service Secretary position that would align the service structurally with the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Secretary Noem has framed this proposal as primarily aimed at boosting the Coast Guard’s maritime security role, saying that “having a Secretary of the Coast Guard will be essential for President Trump’s mandate to rebuild the service into the finest maritime fighting force in the world.” So far, the Secretary of Defense Hegseth has endorsed the proposal, while Congress has yet to take it up. While the creation of a Coast Guard Service Secretary would almost certainly strengthen interagency coordination—giving the service a clearer civilian counterpart to the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force —it remains too early to conclude whether the reform would translate into a larger operational role overseas. The proposal is designed primarily to modernize internal governance and improve strategic planning within DHS, not to alter the service’s mission balance. Any boost to the Coast Guard’s international activities would depend on future policy direction from DHS leadership and sustained demand signals from DoD, State, and Congress.
What to Expect Through 2030
Given these structural realities, Southeast Asian maritime law-enforcement agencies should expect intermittent, inconsistent, and project-specific U.S. Coast Guard engagement through the remainder of the decade. Engagement will occur, but it will be neither sustained nor predictable. Cutter deployments will align with symbolic diplomatic initiatives or limited windows of operational availability. Training detachments will depend on personnel constraints, DHS domestic taskings, and the availability of DoD or State funding. Some exercises and exchanges will cluster around major regional events; others may be postponed when Western Hemisphere operational demands surge.
In practical terms, regional demand for Coast Guard training will continue to outstrip U.S. supply. Even with the September 2025 announcement of more than $55 million in maritime law enforcement funding, the bottleneck remains the service’s operational availability, not funding levels. State and DoD may continue to expand maritime assistance accounts, but without DHS shifting its priorities, the Coast Guard will remain a limited and often unpredictable partner.
Indicators of Potential Change
Congressional action on the Service Secretary proposal would be an important structural indicator to watch. If adopted, the reform would likely enhance interagency coordination by elevating the Coast Guard’s civilian leadership and formalizing its role in national‑level planning alongside DoD and State. However, it is not yet clear whether this improved alignment would produce a meaningful expansion of Coast Guard activities in the Indo‑Pacific. The reform would create the conditions for better coordination, but not the policy direction that would compel a greater operational presence overseas. If authorized and followed up with pressure from the Department of Defense pressure to take on additional training, this role could help institutionalize Coast Guard participation in Indo-Pacific planning cycles and give partners greater predictability regarding future U.S. training commitments.
Budget signals may be subtle but important. Appropriations language directing the service to participate in Indo-Pacific training, allocating new billets for international engagement, or funding forward presence in Guam or with regional partners would suggest policy movement. Conversely, increases in funding for Western Hemisphere operations would likely reduce Indo-Pacific bandwidth even further.
How Southeast Asian States Can Adapt
Southeast Asian partners should plan for enduring variability in U.S. Coast Guard engagement. When the Coast Guard is available, governments should treat these windows as strategic opportunities to embed long-term operational improvements. Effective engagements are those that leave behind doctrine, institutional processes, and local training cadres capable of sustaining capacity even between U.S. visits.
Diversifying partnerships is also essential. Japan, Australia, India, and South Korea all provide maritime law-enforcement capacity-building aligned with regional needs. Japan’s Coast Guard, in particular, offers training across a wide spectrum of enforcement disciplines. Working with multiple partners creates a more resilient ecosystem and reduces dependency on U.S. availability.
U.S. embassy engagement remains valuable. Embassy-based U.S. Coast Guard attachés, security cooperation offices, and INL coordinators often know when Coast Guard availability might open or close due to shifting DHS priorities. Transparent communication can help regional agencies synchronize their planning cycles with U.S. operational realities.
Finally, strengthening national maritime domain awareness and regional information-sharing mechanisms can help compensate for inconsistent training cycles. As the State Department fact sheet notes, programs such as the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness have already improved regional monitoring and coordination for more than 19 countries and are expected to expand.
Conclusion
Southeast Asia faces an enduring need for practical maritime law enforcement training and operational support. The U.S. Coast Guard is, by design and experience, the ideal provider of that support. Both the Department of Defense and the State Department have built strategies, programs, and funding mechanisms around this assumption, and regional demand reinforces it. But structural realities constrain what the United States can deliver. The Coast Guard answers to DHS, and DHS priorities under Secretary Noem and Adm. Luday emphasize domestic readiness and Western Hemisphere operations, not sustained Indo-Pacific engagement. Funding alone cannot overcome these institutional dynamics.
Regional partners should therefore anticipate valuable but intermittent Coast Guard engagement through 2030, while watching carefully for indicators of meaningful change—particularly a new Indo-Pacific Strategy, congressional mandates, or the creation of a Coast Guard Service Secretary. Until such shifts occur, Southeast Asian states should continue diversifying their partnerships, institutionalizing training gains, and planning around the inherent variability in U.S. Coast Guard availability.
