The DEA [U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency] has been a critical partner as well. Our Navy partners and our international partners – Canada, France, England, and the Dutch – are sending ships to help us in this endeavor. And many of the host nations, Mexico, Central America, and Colombia especially, are very valuable partners, particularly in information-sharing, because that’s really what’s driving these successes.

So when I look at who’s coming into the service today – it’s amazing talent. … But I’ve got a plethora of folks who understand they’re connected to something bigger than themselves.

But only the Coast Guard has the authority to execute any one of these 41 bilateral agreements, and broad maritime law enforcement authority. So at the end of the day, it really comes down to a Coast Guard-only solution for performing these interdictions, either on the high seas or sometimes in the territorial seas of a bilateral signatory nation.

Last year the Energy Information Administration reported the United States was close to becoming a net exporter of energy, for the first time since the 1950s. Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass liquefied natural gas terminal started receiving shale gas in October of last year, and shipping out liquefied natural gas (LNG). But the markets seem volatile; prices unsettled. How does the Coast Guard adjust to the demands for its services in the Marine Transportation System when the industry is going through such ups and downs?

There’s still a lot of activity going on. It’s not just LNG right now, but a lot of the derivative products coming off of that, which have a global market demand. I was at Sunoco’s Marcus Hook terminal in New Jersey just recently, and they’re pushing out ethane, butane, and LPG [liquefied petroleum gas], which originates from the shale fields of Pennsylvania. Those fields are the some of the largest gas fields in the world.

The first gas carrier that went through the expanded Panama Canal left Cheniere’s LNG terminal in Louisiana, as we’re exporting LNG into the Asia-Pacific market, and it looks like that market has a potential to grow as well. But every day I check the price point of a barrel of Brent crude. Today, it’s about $45. It was down in the high 30s [dollars] last week. We don’t see it get much above $50, but we know that if it’s sustained at $80 or above for any period of time, the infrastructure that’s laid up right now in the private sector will start to be reactivated. And we cannot be late with the need if we see that reactivation take place. Many of these ships require certificates of inspection by the Coast Guard. So if we’re not ready for that, then that opportunity may pass us by. And I don’t want to be the one standing at the podium, saying: ‘I’m sorry we didn’t see this coming.’ So we keep very close track of that.

So what are your priorities going to be for the coming year – and for the second half of your term?

First, we’ve got a new administration coming in, which will mean a new leadership team in the Department of Homeland Security. And I cannot be more grateful for the leadership that we’ve had under our current secretary, Jeh Johnson, who has made recapitalizing the Coast Guard a priority. His leadership is paying us enormous dividends. We’ve built out our program of record of eight national security cutters, and we now have a ninth one on budget. We just awarded the final phase of our fast response cutter program, our patrol boats, to build all 58 of those. As I mentioned, in about a month, we will award the final design to build out that offshore patrol cutter fleet. And many of us didn’t anticipate, despite our best efforts, that we would have a markup in the 2017 budget to recapitalize heavy icebreakers. That’s going better than my initial expectations from two years ago.

So going forward, we’ve got to work with a new administration. The strategies we laid out two years ago are just as relevant as they are today. It’s great that we’re modernizing, but – and I’ve said this time and again – what brings all these plans together are the people of the Coast Guard, and we’re not going to continue modernizing if we don’t bring our people along with us.

And when I look at our new entrants into this Coast Guard – I’ll just share with you a couple of examples:

Jacquelyn Kubicko, a [petty officer] first class cadet who just graduated this past May from the Coast Guard Academy, is now at Oxford University as a Fulbright scholar. The previous year she was doing groundbreaking research with Lt. Christopher Verlinden [her Academy instructor] on climate change.

I recently met a young seaman at a demo and I asked her what she did before she came into the Coast Guard. She said she’d been in the Air Force. I said, ‘What did you do in the Air Force?’ She said she’d been at the Air Force Academy, so I asked her: ‘When did you leave the Air Force Academy?’ She said: ‘Well, I didn’t. I graduated. I did my five-year commitment. I resigned my commission as a captain in the Air Force, so I could join the United States Coast Guard.’

And I also recently met one of the most junior people in the Coast Guard – she wasn’t yet three months out of training – on an inland river tender in Memphis, Tennessee. They operate off a tug-and-barge configuration. They push into the bank, and they put a team ashore with weed whackers and chainsaws, so they can clear the brush piles away from the visual aids to navigation. There are snakes; there are fire ants, bees, all that kinds of stuff – and most people don’t join the Coast Guard to do that. So I asked her: ‘Did you ever think you would be doing this in the Coast Guard?’ And she said, ‘You know, commandant, if I don’t do my job, there’s half a trillion dollars of commerce that goes down the Mississippi River that won’t safely get to its destination.’

So when I look at who’s coming into the service today – it’s amazing talent. That’s just three of 88,000. But I’ve got a plethora of folks who understand they’re connected to something bigger than themselves. We don’t pay them a whole lot for what they do, but they clearly put service to their nation before their personal needs. And I work for them, to give them the tools they need, and we’ll continue to build on this great foundation of people we have serving our Coast Guard today.

*Editor’s note: In September 2016, after this interview was conducted, the Coast Guard awarded Eastern Shipbuilding Group, Inc., Panama City, Florida, a contract for the lead OPC and up to eight follow-on cutters.

This interview was first published in the Coast Guard Outlook 2016-2017 Edition.