In the US, National Security Council meetings are serious affairs. Each one is allotted an official number and involves discussion of a set agenda with recommendations made, conclusions arrived at and confidential minutes taken. These meetings are forums for discussing issues of national importance and are never held when the president is out of the country or when only two or three members can attend. In addition, members of Congress are never allowed to sit in.
Take, for example, the 823 Military Bombardment of Quemoy (now Kinmen), also known as the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, that broke out on Aug. 23, 1958. Two days later, and again on the 29th of that month, then-US president Dwight Eisenhower called together the acting secretaries of state and defense, the director of the CIA, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of Naval Operations in a meeting known to history as the “Meeting at the White House on the Taiwan Strait Situation.”
Taiwan’s Organic Act of the National Security Council (國家安全會議組織法) defines the National Security Council (NSC) as an institution that exists to advise the president on major national security policy.
It is to consist of a total of 12 members, these being the vice president; the premier and vice premier; the Ministers of the Interior, Foreign Affairs, National Defense, Economic Affairs and Finance; the Chairperson of the Mainland Affairs Council; the Chief of Staff; and the secretaries-general of the NSC and the National Security Bureau (NSB).
When asked by the press, while he was on his trip to Palau, for his reaction to the news that a South Korean navy vessel had sank near North Korean waters, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) seemed to be none the wiser, and had to ask Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) and NSC Secretary-General Hu Wei-jen (胡為真), who were in his entourage, to “seek confirmation” of the facts from Taipei.
He described this meeting with the two men as an “ad hoc National Security Council meeting,” adding that he called three meetings in the 15 hours after being informed of the incident to “keep up with developments and decide how to proceed.”
The fact that the NSC meeting was attended by only two of the possible 12 members clearly violated the law. Ma referring to the meeting as an “ad hoc NSC meeting” was strange enough, but his choice of participants in “seeking confirmation” was equally problematic, as Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) sat in on the conference call with the three official NSC members, Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長), Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and Minister of National Defense Kao Hua-chu (高華柱), whilst the NSB chairman was conspicuous by his absence.
It seems that Ma does not fully comprehend the importance of these NSC meetings, the facts of which it fell to Kao to clarify, since neither Siew, Wu, or Wang felt able to talk to reporters “seeking confirmation.”
According to Kao, “the ad hoc meeting that the president called was a meeting about a national security issue”; it “was not actually a statutory, formal National Security Council meeting per se, and neither did it constitute an activation of the national security mechanism on this occasion.”
When it comes to fluff and bluff, Ma clearly has the lead on Kao; when it comes to being up-front, doing things according to the law and not mincing his words, Ma is way behind Kao. Can this government even do anything right?
James Wang is a journalist based in Washington.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
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