President 
Lai Ching-te on Saturday announced the founding of the World Alliance for Disaster Management (WADM), a Taiwan-initiated international body whose founding members are 11 of Taiwan's diplomatic allies and Somaliland. Lai called it a major breakthrough in more than half a century of Taiwan's push to take part in international organisations, speaking at the opening of the Presidential Office's whole-of-society defence resilience international forum in Taipei. Governments, disaster agencies and groups from 21 countries, including the United States and Japan, have joined as observers or partners, CNA reported.
What will the alliance do? It will pursue joint training, joint drills, mutual support and information sharing, linking early warning with disaster response and recovery, to make Taiwan a hub for cross-border disaster cooperation, Lai said. Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung, whose remarks were reported by Liberty Times, said the alliance will be based in Taiwan and that the island's long experience of typhoons and earthquakes is a common asset of humanity worth sharing with the world. Eswatini's Deputy Prime Minister Thulisile Dladla said no country is too small to contribute and none is strong enough to cope alone.
What did the president say about China? Facing a fast-changing international situation and an intensifying threat from China, his responsibility as president is to make Taiwan better prepared and strong enough to maintain the status quo, so that peace is not broken by unilateral provocation, Lai said. Taiwan's defence budget, he said in remarks reported by CNA, has doubled over the past decade, will exceed NT$1 trillion for the first time next year, at NT$1.1225 trillion, and is expected to reach 5% of GDP by 2030. He cited August's Han Kuang and urban resilience exercises, which for the first time included a mobile-network slowdown drill covering 17 million people, as the largest joint military-civilian exercise ever held. "When authoritarianism tries to export fear, democratic societies should export confidence through resilience," he said.
Who else addressed the forum? Anduril founder Palmer Luckey said Beijing could reach the conclusion many countries have reached before, that this is a war that might be won but is not worth winning, PTS reported. Military aid, Luckey said, is only the outer wall of a democratic fortress that must be held up from inside by the resilience of Taiwan's people. The forum, attended by more than 500 experts and guests from Taiwan and abroad, came ahead of a US-China leaders' summit expected the following week, Liberty Times reported.
Figures referenced: Lai Ching-te. — JudgeMarket.
