The Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Committee, which is to hold its first meeting on Thursday, marks an important step in developing the national conversation about enhancing the nation’s resilience and constructing a more informed defense policy in the face of increasing threats in a more dangerous world.
Established by President William Lai (賴清德) in June, the committee is good politics in that it bypasses the conservative Ministry of National of Defense, which has consistently resisted any attempts to reform national defense into a whole-of-society approach.
The committee also brings the concept of whole-of-society defense directly into the national discourse legitimized and backed by the authority of the Presidential Office.
This is important because members of the pan-blue camp have denigrated and chastised attempts by civil society groups, such as the civil defense organizations Kuma Academy and Forward Alliance, to build societal resilience. They say building a national mentality of resistance and resilience is scaremongering and erroneously hypes China as a threat.
However, Lai setting up the committee is not just good politics, as the whole-of-society concept itself helps build toward the new force structure and operational concepts envisioned by former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in her televised address to the nation on Dec. 27, 2022.
While Tsai’s announcement that she would increase military conscription from four months to one year garnered most of the headlines, more significant was the blueprint she laid out for how the military should reorganize itself to defend against contingencies, one which envisions civil defense playing a larger and more critical role.
Tsai’s reform blueprint is anchored on four mutually reinforcing elements: a main battle force, a standing garrison force, a civil defense system and a reserve force.
While her blueprint envisions the main battle force being responsible for frontline defense — air, land and sea — the garrison force would defend critical infrastructure such as bridges, hospitals and airfields, while the civil defense system would support both forces by helping to coordinate disaster response, distribute essential supplies, oversee public safety and conduct emergency repairs. The reserve force would be organized into units, streamlined and fed into the main battle and garrison forces.
Augmenting the military’s disaster response and defense capabilities through civil defense units makes sense in light of the challenges the military faces in reaching its recruitment quota after the transition to a “volunteer military.” It was expected that the military would easily reach its recruitment targets after transitioning, but this has been far from the case.
The Ministry of National Defense envisions an active-duty force of 175,000 personnel, but last year it was reported that it had just 155,218 volunteers in active service. Some frontline units are also reported to be at just 60 percent of their authorized strength.
With a whole-of-society reform, civil society can take some of the pressure off the frontline troops by taking up more responsibility at the rear, such as by coordinating disaster relief, so the main battle force can focus on frontline defense.
This makes sense in light of military recruitment challenges, but also makes use of Taiwan’s considerable human capital in areas such as cybersecurity, healthcare and logistics.
The committee is an advisory body to the president and has no decisionmaking authority, but by bringing together representatives from government, the military, police, fire fighters and civil defense organizations, its establishment is a significant and positive step in furthering the national conversation about national defense, and in constructing better and more informed policy to enhance national resilience.
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