Is there an Indonesian way of warfare? The main characteristic of our way of warfare is the reliance on defensive military operations. This is due to the fact that Indonesia tends to see itself as a weak state that cannot develop and modernize its armed forces to a level that can significantly challenge the major powers.

As early as mid-1951, the Army Chief of Staff Gen. A.H. Nasution stated: "Bear in mind that any enemy who attacks us will have an organization more modern than ours, that in our geographic position as an island nation, we are very weak, and that we will be unable to develop completely modern armed forces."

This realistic perception on the state's power shared by military officers created a foundation for the development of a defensive strategic culture. For most military officers, the inherent character of Indonesia as a weak state prohibited the development of an offensive doctrine.

As a weak state, Indonesia always feels threatened by power struggles between major nations. Indonesia's refusal to align itself with major powers is an indication of how it always tries to escape from a realist's strategic option of balance. This factor is rooted in the principle of active and independent foreign policy which was established in 1948. This principle prohibits Indonesia from joining any military alliance. As a result, an incentive to develop an offensive doctrine to honor alliance commitments is nonexistence in Indonesia's defense diplomacy.

As a weak state, Indonesia also does not have a tradition that sees technological adaptation as an essential element to enhance military effectiveness. A case in point was the arms transfer from the Soviet Union. Military aid of US$1 billion from the Soviet Union received from 1954 until 1961 did not have a significant impact on modernizing the military.

This was due to the failure of integrating new military equipment into the defense strategy. The massive arms purchases from the Soviet Union were used primarily to build up the Navy and the Air Force, without modifying the defense strategy that still was rooted in land-based territorial warfare.

This case indicates that the introduction of new military technology was followed by a problem of disintegrative defense strategy. The disintegrative strategy is common in weak states and is the result of the lack of technical expertise to implement the Revolution of Military Affairs (RMA). Indonesia failed to transform the quantitative arms transfer into qualitative land, air and naval capabilities. As a result, most of the military campaigns launched by Indonesia could not utilize new military technology and this led to series of military stalemates.

Another weak state characteristic can also be found at the force employment level. Since the era of our independence war, Indonesia's defense doctrine has tried to modify the linear defense concept. The realization that the Dutch military force was far more advanced than Indonesia's regular force forced the military to develop the Wehrkreis system.

This system essentially divided war zones into several circles (kreis) that allowed military units to independently defend (wehr) their territorial compartments. The Wehrkreis system was then coupled with guerrilla warfare principles as the operational form of an asymmetric warfare that would allow a weaker party to employ indirect military tactics in a war zone.

In Oct. 1945, when one of our independence heroes Urip Soemaharjo argued in favor of the creation of the national armed forces, he was confident that Indonesia would be able to develop a strong, modern and professional army. A reality check was given by Nasution in 1946 by developing a weak state's way of asymmetric-indirect-defensive warfare.

Now, in Oct. 2008, Nasution's reality check is alas still relevant. After 63 years of independence, Indonesia's strategic option of a defensive doctrine is still based on the reality that Indonesia is a weak state.

It does not mean that we should adopt a more offensive doctrine. But the realty is that our military has failed to initiate a significant doctrinal innovation due to the existence of a strong strategic belief that constantly portrays Indonesia as a weak state. We must reconstruct our strategic belief if we want to transform our military into strong, modern and professional armed forces.

The writer holds a post-graduate degree from the London School of Economics, and the National Defense University, Washington D.C.,is a researcher at the University of Indonesia, and currently serves as the Director of Defense Economics at the Institute of Defense and Security Studies (IODAS).

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