WHAT IS ASYMMETRIC WARFARE

An Essay About Asymmetric Warfare

Asymmetric warfare was originally a terminology that is new to me. I got to know this terminology about a year ago from my friend at UNHAN. Driven by curiosity, I started to look for the meaning of asymmetric warfare. I found that this kind of warfare were developed from unusual way of thinking and different from the usual rule of war, which has wide range of spectrum, and also included so many aspects (such as geography, demography, ideology, politics, cultures, etc). Asymmetric warfare always involves opposing forces which differs greatly in military power and that typically involves the use of conventional weapons and tactics to coped with the different powers.

Ryamizard Ryacudu, Indonesian Ministry of Defense, defined asymmetric warfare as a non-military war or in popular language called "smart power", as a non-conventional war that is cheap but has power to destroy much more powerful than the atomic bomb. This warfare holds range of aspects which can be used as sources of "destroyer", such as using media as a "tool". For example, there were a small group that use the internet to spread words about the LGBT, which has started to outspoken in society. They aim to create a disturbance in the region by pitting people. The news deliberately made and delivered in the way to trigger some bad reactions from society, because obviously issues relating to LGBT is controvert to the value in society. Shortly groups against LGBT appeared, consist of people who loathe LGBT, even sometimes vandalized them. Consequently, the groups who support LGBT stand up and do counter attack. In the end, commotion cannot be avoided and causing disturbance in society. It can be seen that, the object of the group that started the news was achieved without they need to intervene directly. Of course the reasoning of that small group not only due to "just because they can". They may actually planned the commotion as a distraction from the bigger problem from public concern at the moment, for instance the tax evasion case of an impotant person or money laundering in a big company. This example only a small sample of asymmetric warfare, but it can become much bigger and deadlier when terrorism or radical groups involved.

To get in depth understanding of the asymmetric warfare, we must be able to use our intelligence in unusual way. We have to be creative and holistically on looking things. We also have to pay more attention at anything that happens around us, such as the flow of informations, the contemporary trends that are famous, ongoing politics, social, cultures, demographics, etc. Any information and knowledge that we have, can be used as material and consideration for designing strategies or withstanding another strategies so it can compensate the power gap between the involved parties. We can also analyzing the current strategies to be studied under scrutinize using the informations and knowledges that we have accumulated.

As long as we are able to do things which have been described above, we should be able to understand what is asymmetric warfare in depth. Eventually, after studying this kind of warfare with everything we've got, hopefully we are capable of being experts and practitioners in the field of asymmetric warfare in order to provide recommendations, concepts and policy strategies of prevention, along with deterrence and suppression comprehensively, in order to strengthten our defense system.

I am interested to study asymmetric warfare because it is challenging and complex. We are required to think uniquely to understanding this warfare. Upon reading the description of this warfare, we can see there are many possibilities that may occur, many ways we can do, and many strategies that can be designed.