Taiwan's Economic Security

The 1997–1998 Asian financial crises triggered economic, political and societal turmoil across East Asia and intensified debates on the impact of economic globalization on national and regional developments. More intriguingly to strategists and security experts, the Asian turbulence reopened debates on the concepts of economic security within the sphere of non-traditional security studies. ¹ The paradigm of non-traditional security, as opposed to the traditional state-centric notion of national security, goes beyond state sovereignty and territorial integrity in identifying security objects to be protected. It also perceives national security threats from broader environments beyond military and political confrontations, and weighs nonmilitary approaches to security goals. The study of the economic–security nexus, which used to focus on the economic contributions to national defense capability and regional security landscapes, is now increasingly explored in the context of economic globalization and the emerging transnational governance in response to globalization.