By Jia Feimao | 2025-10-16

The Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation (TAEF) recently released a policy report titled "Advocating for Taiwan’s Indo-Pacific Strategy," which for the first time proposes forming a "security resilience chain." Taiwan must tighten security cooperation and military interoperability with like-minded partners to safeguard its defense and regional stability, the study says.

On October 8, TAEF, sponsored by the Foreign Ministry, held an Indo-Pacific defense summit and formally released the strategic report.

Concrete actions by Taiwan imperative

Rising authoritarian influence has created geopolitical uncertainty and Taiwan has long neglected security in its national strategy, said TAEF CEO Yang Hao.

Taiwan should take concrete actions to strengthen country-to-country cooperation and regional joint defense with like-minded democracies, he said.

Beijing maintains that Taiwan is part of China and denounces any country cooperating militarily with Taiwan for allegedly interfering in Chinese domestic affairs.

As authoritarian countries like China and Russia strengthen their collaboration, the military balance in the Indo-Pacific region has been disrupted, Lin Fei-fan, deputy secretary-general of the National Security Council (NSC), stated at the meeting.

Democracies fail to coordinate strategy

Democratic partners still lack effective coordination and interoperability, he said.

He urged Indo-Pacific nations to take concrete actions to address the military imbalance and lay the foundation for further cooperation.

China's maritime activities have long gone beyond the military domain, now integrating maritime militias, coast guard forces and fishery development and thus creating a new type of threat, Katsuya Yamamoto, director of the Strategy and Deterrence Program of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Tokyo, stated.

He urged Japan and Taiwan to strengthen information exchange and policy dialogue to establish a stable foundation for security cooperation.

"We need to establish the relationship, military to military," Yamamoto emphasized. Taiwan and Japan have close cultural and economic ties but lack military communication channels, he said.

The entire strategic first island chain, including South Korea and the Philippines, needs to establish military-to-military relationships, and Taiwan should not be left out, he said.

This policy, he said, is the essence of "resilience."

Officer-to-officer exchanges

The Sasakawa Peace Foundation runs a Japan-China Friendship Fund, which organizes regular exchanges between Japanese and Chinese military officers to foster understanding and avoid misunderstandings or conflicts, said Yamamoto.

Japan already has extended similar programs to South Korea, Indonesia and other regional countries. Yamamoto advocated for Japan and Taiwan to establish similar exchange programs.

In an October 9 opinion piece in Foreign Affairs, Lin of the NSC called on democratic nations to beef up security collaboration with Taiwan. He emphasized the need for joint operational capacity across multiple domains.

In 2025, Taiwan and the United States significantly strengthened their defense partnership "through military procurement and arms deliveries, significantly accelerating Taiwan's preparedness," he said.

This move should awaken other democracies, he said.

Should Taiwan fall, regional deterrence would collapse and authoritarian expansion would accelerate, he said. He urged democracies to act now to strengthen collective security ties and promote interoperability.