A Coast Guard Cutter Kimball crewmember observing a Russian Destroyer in the Bering Sea, September 19, 2022. Coast Guard Photo

The Watch provides an opinion piece by ADAM LAJEUNESSE, PHD, an associate professor in the public policy and governance program, at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada.

He discusses why the Russians and Chinese decided to extend their exercise into waters near Alaska, and what the US response should be to such demonstrations.

Managing the response is therefore a balancing act. These activities cannot be ignored or even downplayed, but emphasis should be put on short-circuiting adversary messaging. Beijing is anxious to paint U.S. FONOPs as shams. While the U.S. government has been disciplined in its messaging as it was during a similar voyage in 2021, more emphasis should be placed on the PRC’s right to be there. Though it may seem counterintuitive, there is a benefit to overtly recognizing Chinese ships’ right to be in the region. While that may be politically tricky, it should be possible to warn of the dangers posed by the PRC’s navy generally, while also emphasizing its right to be anywhere on the high seas.

Russia’s attempt to portray itself as a great power equal, capable of threatening the U.S. homeland can, likewise, be turned back upon itself. The reality is that Moscow’s weakness has forced it to increasingly rely on the PRC for economic and political support. Its naval partnership should be addressed more explicitly for what it is, the gradual replacing of Russian power in the North Pacific and, potentially, the Arctic by the PRC.

His evaluation is a perfect explanation of why having such exercises monitored by Coast Guard cutters, as had been done in 2021 and 2022, was a perfect response. (In fact, Chinese warships transited US territorial waters in 2015.)

Why the change in 2023?

To some extent at least, I think the Navy response, specifically sending DDGs to shadow the group, was because they were stung by unfair criticism, that we looked weak because there had been no obvious US Navy presence previously.

If NORTHCOM wanted to take out the Chinese/Russian surface action group (SAG), air assets could have done the job. That the US Navy SAG never exceeded four units, if anything does make us look weak.

Perhaps a USAF B-1 fly-over on a day when no live fire exercises were scheduled might have been an appropriate response. (B-1s with LRASM are a particularly deadly anti-ship combination.)

If there had been hostilities, putting a numerically inferior US Navy SAG close to a potentially hostile SAG, might have just resulted in a friendly fire incident, if the Air Force confused US units with Chinese or Russian units.

Also, we should never miss an opportunity to remind the Russians, they have reason to fear China more than the US. The Russian ships in the SAG were all either older or smaller than their Chinese counterparts, and I am sure the Chinese made it abundantly clear to the Russians, that they had outgrown any Russian tutoring.