National security and military agencies have had a lot of media coverage since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office — not much of which has been positive. The government isn’t strong in these areas and tends to gaze across the Taiwan Strait through rose-tinted spectacles. It has also curbed the roles of the National Security Bureau (NSB) and the Military Intelligence Bureau (MIB) and suggested appointing civilians to head both.
There’s nothing unusual about a democratic society having a civilian director of a military intelligence agency. It is important, however, that they have the necessary expertise in the field.
In the past, these agencies have tended to concentrate on providing early-warning intelligence or long-term threat assessments. There are those who now contend that since cross-strait relations have taken a significant turn for the better, we should concentrate on securing intelligence that would help improve trade, politics, our ability to deal with China using soft power and our global strategic positioning.
The term “opportunities intelligence” is being bounced around. They also hold that an MIB run by professional military personnel will be less able to gather intelligence of this type, and that a civilian director would be more stable.
The real problem is not the nature of intelligence gathered or even how good the agencies are at gathering it; nor is it whether a director has a civilian background, provided they are competent.
The real problem is that the government seems unable to distinguish an opportunity from a threat. Furthermore, the National Security Council (NSC) has failed to produce inter-agency coordination or provide effective guidance. This is why mistakes have been made.
The government has publicly said that the missiles pointed at Taiwan across the Taiwan Strait are both an opportunity and a threat. They say they want to maximize the opportunity and minimize the threat. But just what is the advantage of having missiles pointed at us?
What we have here is a civilian government that is not particularly well-versed or experienced in military matters or national security, possibly failing to understand the nature of a threat and thinking the threat can be minimized. This is misplaced optimism.
Or maybe the administration is overstating the “advantages” of the situation because it fails to see the reality of our position and to appreciate the public’s crisis of confidence.
The NSB and MIB are in the same business, although each has its own remit. They are both intelligence gathering agencies on the national strategic level and, although they have separate places in a hierarchy, the situation is more fluid than it appears.
For years, their personnel have been communicating with each other and providing inter-agency support. The MIB’s role is not confined to gathering military intelligence about the size and capabilities of China’s People’s Liberation Army, Navy and Air Force.
Nor is it true that the NSB is better at gathering and analyzing “opportunity” intelligence than the MIB.
Neither should one think of the two types of intelligence as discrete ideas. There are political, economic, social and technical elements to each. When you take the economic element into account, there also has to be some kind of informed and inclusive assessment of how that affects political, military or social factors. One cannot, and should not, look at any one of these elements in isolation.
This is a particularly pertinent point right now, and one that the government and national security agencies would be well advised to consider, especially if the government continues to pursue an Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China.
Once the MIB is back on track and functioning as it should, the NSC and the Ministry of National Defense will need to form a comprehensive framework in which effective opportunity and threat assessments can be made. Expertise in the intelligence field has been given more importance in the past and we should go back to that. Why ask the blind to lead the sighted? Only people familiar with the territory will be able to lead the government through the minefield that is cross-strait relations and identify opportunity and danger. This is what we need if we are to minimize the threat to national security.
Shu Chin-chiang is a former advisory committee member of the National Security Council.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
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