TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan’s National Security Council (NSC) has taken on a broader role in countering Chinese coercion, according to Nikkei Asia.
Nikkei Asia cited multiple sources as saying the council is driving military and civil defense reforms aimed at bolstering asymmetric warfare capabilities and whole-of-society resilience. The sources said the council is also coordinating with other government ministries and conducting diplomatic outreach to garner international support for Taiwan.
Referring to the military’s focus on drones, Tristan Tang, a nonresident fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research, said, “The NSC is important because it helps the president develop and coordinate that policy, track how the defense ministry is implementing it, and identify problems that may require intervention,” per Nikkei Asia.
“Militaries are naturally conservative institutions, so political authority from NSC can be important in pushing major defense reforms forward,” Tang said.
Over the past 10 years, the NSC has taken on a broader role because the boundaries among security, foreign policy, and domestic policy have become less clear, a former senior NSC official told Nikkei Asia.
Issues such as international trade policy and technology restrictions are now more closely linked to Taiwan’s foreign affairs and national security decisions rather than being treated separately.
“The NSC has emerged as the core executive power of security and intelligence and policymaking,” the former official said.
An official from a G7 government, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the NSC has played an important role in improving Taiwan’s maritime security, Nikkei Asia reported. The official also praised NSC Deputy Secretary-General Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) for “truly impressive” work on urban resilience.
“I’m not sure other countries could pull together such an ambitious agenda, at all levels of government, this fast,” the official added.
However, a Western official warned that the NSC and the government must accelerate reforms in asymmetric warfare and civil defense, according to Nikkei Asia.
“The urgency is implementing the changes in the armed forces, not think-tank style discussions,” the official said.
British lawmaker Tom Tugendhat said Taiwan is already facing online and offline attacks, as well as maritime intimidation. Without better coordination, he warned, Taiwan could be “divided and overwhelmed by Beijing before it can mount any meaningful response.”
Britain and Japan have recently moved to establish new intelligence bodies. Philip Shetler-Jones, an Indo-Pacific security expert at the UK’s Royal United Services Institute, said there was room for cooperation between the NSC and these agencies.
Given Japan’s acknowledgment that a Taiwan emergency is also a Japanese one, “it is natural that the new intelligence services would benefit from a link with Taiwan’s NSC as a source of information to complete assessments on a potential crisis,” Shetler-Jones said.
Earlier this month, NSC Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) told Nikkei Asia that the council had not changed its mission but had expanded its priorities.
“In the old days, defense of Taiwan was a responsibility of the (Ministry of National Defense),” Wu said. “But nowadays, thinking about the resilience of Taiwan’s government or Taiwan society as a whole, we need to coordinate among government agencies so that when a crisis comes, whether it’s a natural or man-made disaster, society can understand how they can survive, how they can help themselves, and how they can help others.”
