The disappearance of eight Taiwanese businessmen in the waters off Madagascar earlier this month and their families’ attempts to contact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help them locate the missing men highlighted the lack of an effective mechanism to offer diplomatic assistance to Taiwanese overseas.
During such emergencies, every second counts and the mechanism should have kicked into action immediately. The problem is action is not the strong suit of diplomats. Although diplomacy is an extension of domestic politics, the organizational structure of Taiwanese overseas missions has flaws, making it difficult for them to offer full assistance.
Following are some suggestions on how the ministry can quickly gain assistance-related information, set up a diplomatic assistance network and interpret vital information.
First, a call transfer system should be set up. This is easy to set up in overseas missions given continuing changes and improvements in telecommunications technologies. The cost of transferring calls using VoIP telephony, for instance, to the ministry or transferring calls from different departments of the ministry to the person on duty is not high. A call transfer system would allow foreign missions to operate 24/7 and thus bring the function of diplomatic assistance into full play.
A call transfer system is like the command center at fire and police stations, which allow emergency information or calls to be monitored at any time and dealt with instantly. Of course, the ministry can cooperate with these organizations only on the premise that there are officials taking emergency calls. The establishment of a call transfer service, in fact, means the establishment of a virtual diplomatic assistance command center.
Second, a virtual diplomatic assistance command center should be established. “Virtual” does not mean “non-existent,” but rather setting up a regional rescue network without spending money on a physical command center or expensive equipment. Taiwanese missions abroad can form a hierarchical and systematic network enabling emergency assistance and mobilization. It can also be done by establishing a virtual regional emergency assistance network in different time zones such as Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas.
As it is more difficult to quickly mobilize agencies to provide assistance overseas than at home, a virtual diplomatic assistance command center can integrate domestic and overseas assistance resources and provide diplomatic assistance. Rescue operations might not function well in some developing countries that have less developed government mechanisms for assistance because of political, economic and administrative problems. Diplomatic staffers should not use this as an excuse, but instead be even more aggressive in combining domestic and international rescue resources, thus forging official and non-official diplomatic assistance relations.
Because the nation’s diplomatic and consular staffing system is not flexible and the function of the nation’s overseas organizations is not complete, the government can take advantage of the local branches of global assistance organizations or set up and cooperate with global nonprofit, non-governmental organizations through its overseas missions to be able to respond quickly to emergencies.
In short, the government should establish a virtual diplomatic assistance command center to connect all existing networks and make use of domestic and international resources to offset the defects of the current emergency assistance mechanism.
Yang Yung-nane is a political science professor and vice dean of the College of Social Sciences at Cheng Kung University.
Translated by Ted Yang
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS