War : Survivors, Memory, and Moral Responsibility (21)

The nature of armed conflict has undergone a profound transformation since the mid-twentieth century. Whereas classical warfare was predominantly characterised by engagements between symmetrical state actors on defined battlefields, the contemporary security environment is defined by asymmetrical confrontations involving non-state actors, digitalised battlespaces, and contested legal and ethical frameworks. This essay examines three interrelated dimensions of modern warfare: the rise of terrorism and guerrilla tactics as instruments of asymmetrical conflict; the emergence of cyber warfare as a novel domain of hostilities; and the evolving moral and legal debates that these developments have provoked. Drawing on a range of scholarly, strategic, and legal sources, the essay argues that the persistence of asymmetrical conflict demands a fundamental re-evaluation of the doctrines, norms, and institutions that govern the use of force in international relations.

MODERN WARFARE AND ASYMMETRICAL CONFLICT

Terrorism, Cyber Warfare, and the Ethics of Contemporary Armed Conflict  

The conduct of war has always reflected the political, technological, and social conditions of its era. The industrialised mass conflicts of the twentieth century—epitomised by the two World Wars—gave way, in the latter half of the century, to a more fragmented and complex landscape of armed confrontation. Scholars such as Mary Kaldor (2012) have characterised this shift as the emergence of "new wars"—conflicts distinguished by the blurring of distinctions between soldiers and civilians, the proliferation of non-state armed groups, and the pursuit of identity-based political objectives rather than classical territorial conquest.

This transformation has been accelerated by globalisation, technological diffusion, and the declining capacity of certain states to monopolise legitimate violence within their territories. The result is a security environment in which asymmetrical conflict—the confrontation between actors of markedly unequal military capability who employ correspondingly different strategies and tactics—has become the dominant paradigm. Understanding the character of this environment, and the normative challenges it generates, is among the most pressing tasks confronting scholars, practitioners, and policymakers alike.

Terrorism and Guerrilla Warfare

Conceptual Foundations

Terrorism and guerrilla warfare represent the two most prevalent modalities of asymmetrical armed conflict. Although the two are frequently conflated in public discourse, they are analytically distinct. Guerrilla warfare, derived from the Spanish diminutive of "guerra" (war), refers to a form of irregular military strategy in which relatively small and mobile forces harass, attrit, and ultimately compel the withdrawal of a stronger adversary through hit-and-run tactics, ambushes, and the exploitation of terrain and popular support (Mao Tse-tung, 1961). Terrorism, by contrast, is characterised primarily by the deliberate targeting of non-combatants to generate fear and to coerce political actors—whether governments, populations, or the international community—into making concessions (Schmid, 2011).

The distinction matters because it has both strategic and legal implications. Guerrilla fighters may, under certain conditions, qualify for combatant status and the protections afforded by international humanitarian law. Terrorists, by definition, forfeit such protections by targeting civilians. In practice, however, the two phenomena frequently overlap, and many non-state armed groups engage in both irregular military operations and acts of terrorism as part of a broader campaign.

 

Historical and Contemporary Manifestations

The history of asymmetrical conflict is extensive and predates the modern state system. However, the twentieth century witnessed the codification of guerrilla warfare as a coherent strategic doctrine, most influentially in the writings of Mao Tse-tung, Vo Nguyen Giap, and Che Guevara. Mao's theory of protracted popular war posited that a weaker force could defeat a stronger adversary by operating in three phases: strategic defence, strategic stalemate, and strategic offensive—a framework that proved devastatingly effective in the Chinese Civil War and in the Vietnamese resistance to French and American intervention (Fall, 2005).

The decolonisation struggles of the mid-twentieth century produced numerous successful guerrilla campaigns, from the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962) to the Viet Cong's resistance to American military power in Vietnam. These conflicts demonstrated the limitations of conventional military superiority when confronting a determined insurgency embedded in a sympathetic population. As David Galula (1964), one of the foundational theorists of counter-insurgency, observed, in guerrilla warfare the political and military dimensions of conflict are inseparable, and victory requires not merely the defeat of the enemy's forces but the winning of popular legitimacy.

Contemporary terrorism, by contrast, has increasingly taken on a transnational character, exemplified most dramatically by the attacks of 11 September 2001 carried out by al-Qaeda. The attacks demonstrated that a non-state network, operating across multiple jurisdictions and exploiting the openness of globalised societies, could inflict catastrophic harm on a superpower and precipitate a fundamental reorientation of global security policy (Burke, 2004). The subsequent "Global War on Terror"—prosecuted through military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, drone strike campaigns in multiple countries, and expansive domestic surveillance programmes—illustrated both the reach of modern counter-terrorism capacity and its profound limitations and costs.

The emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as a quasi-territorial entity between 2013 and 2019 represented a further mutation of jihadist terrorism, blending conventional military operations, territorial governance, sophisticated propaganda, and spectacular atrocities into a novel hybrid threat (McCants, 2015). Although the territorial caliphate was militarily destroyed by 2019, ISIS has persisted as a dispersed network capable of inspiring and directing attacks globally, illustrating the resilience of decentralised terrorist organisations.

 

Strategic and Political Implications

The persistence of terrorism and guerrilla warfare in the contemporary world reflects a fundamental strategic logic. The "calculus of violence" available to non-state actors has been dramatically expanded by access to cheap and readily available weapons, encrypted communications, and the global reach of the internet. At the same time, the political and reputational costs of disproportionate counter-insurgency operations have constrained the responses available to state actors, creating what Ivan Arreguín-Toft (2005) terms a "strategic interaction" in which the asymmetry of means does not necessarily translate into an asymmetry of outcomes.

The policy implications are significant. Effective responses to terrorism and guerrilla warfare require an integrated approach that combines the disruption of organisational networks, the reduction of recruitment and radicalisation pathways, the provision of legitimate governance and economic development in conflict-affected areas, and the building of international coalitions capable of addressing transnational threats (Byman, 2015). Neither military force alone nor purely developmental strategies are sufficient; the challenge is one of sustained, nuanced, and politically intelligent engagement.

Cyber Warfare and Technological Battlefields

The Emergence of Cyberspace as a Domain of Conflict

The second major dimension of modern asymmetrical conflict is the emergence of cyberspace as a domain of armed hostilities. The digital revolution has transformed virtually every aspect of modern societies—including their militaries, critical infrastructure, and governmental systems—creating new vectors of vulnerability that adversaries, both state and non-state, can exploit. Whilst cyber conflict has roots in the activities of hackers and state intelligence agencies dating to the 1980s and 1990s, it has evolved into a sophisticated instrument of strategic competition.

Thomas Rid (2013) has argued that, strictly speaking, most cyber operations fall short of constituting "war" in the Clausewitzian sense, because they lack the violence, instrumentality, and political character associated with conventional armed conflict. Instead, he characterises the majority of cyber operations as sabotage, espionage, or subversion—activities that, whilst potentially enormously consequential, do not in themselves constitute acts of war. This conceptual point is important, but it should not obscure the fact that cyber operations can cause substantial physical harm and can be integrated into broader military campaigns in ways that make the distinction between war and non-war difficult to sustain in practice.

 

Major Incidents and Evolving Capabilities

The most widely cited early example of offensive cyber operations was the Stuxnet worm, discovered in 2010, which is widely attributed to a joint United States–Israeli operation and was designed to sabotage Iran's uranium enrichment programme by causing centrifuges at the Natanz facility to self-destruct (Sanger, 2012). Stuxnet was remarkable not only for its technical sophistication but for its demonstration that cyber weapons could cause tangible physical damage to industrial infrastructure—effectively constituting an act of sabotage, if not an act of war.

Subsequent years have seen a proliferation of significant cyber incidents. The 2007 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Estonian government, media, and banking websites—widely attributed to Russian-linked actors in the context of a political dispute over a Soviet-era monument—were among the first instances of large-scale, politically motivated cyber attacks on a sovereign state (Herzog, 2011). The 2016 Russian interference in the United States presidential election, involving the hacking of Democratic Party email servers and a sophisticated social media disinformation campaign, illustrated the use of cyber tools not simply to degrade military capabilities but to undermine the democratic processes of an adversary (Mueller, 2019). The 2020 SolarWinds attack, attributed by the United States government to Russian intelligence services, demonstrated the vulnerability of even the most secure governmental and commercial networks to sophisticated supply-chain compromises (Sanger & Perlroth, 2021).

In the context of interstate conflict, the war in Ukraine, which intensified dramatically with Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, has provided the most extensive contemporary example of the integration of cyber operations into conventional military campaigns. Russian cyber attacks on Ukrainian governmental systems, energy infrastructure, and communications networks have been a persistent feature of the conflict, although the anticipated "cyber blitzkrieg" did not materialise as decisively as many analysts had predicted, partly owing to Ukrainian resilience and the assistance of Western technology companies (Watling & Reynolds, 2022).

 

The Asymmetrical Dimensions of Cyber Conflict

Cyber warfare has pronounced asymmetrical characteristics that distinguish it from conventional armed conflict. The cost of entry is relatively low: sophisticated cyber capabilities can be developed or acquired for a fraction of the cost of conventional military systems, enabling smaller states, non-state actors, and criminal organisations to conduct operations against far more powerful adversaries. The attribution problem—the difficulty of definitively identifying the source of a cyber attack—further advantages the attacker, providing plausible deniability and complicating the formulation of proportionate responses (Rid & Buchanan, 2015).

At the same time, highly digitised and networked societies are disproportionately vulnerable to cyber attack. The critical infrastructure—power grids, water treatment facilities, financial systems, healthcare networks—of advanced industrial states presents an enormous attack surface. This creates an asymmetry of vulnerability as well as capability: actors with less digitalised infrastructure, paradoxically, may be less susceptible to certain forms of cyber attack, even if they are also less capable of conducting offensive cyber operations.

The implications for deterrence theory are significant. Classical nuclear deterrence relied upon the credible threat of mutually assured destruction to deter aggression. Cyber deterrence is far more complex: the attribution problem undermines the credibility of deterrent threats; the diversity of cyber capabilities and the variety of potential targets make the formulation of proportionate responses difficult; and the possibility of escalation from cyber attacks to conventional military conflict introduces risks that are difficult to manage (Libicki, 2009).

Moral and Legal Debates of Modern Warfare

International Humanitarian Law and Its Application

The regulation of armed conflict by international law has a long history, rooted in the customary practices of states and codified most comprehensively in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977. The fundamental principles of international humanitarian law (IHL)—distinction, proportionality, necessity, and precaution—were designed to limit the suffering caused by armed conflict and to protect those who do not or can no longer take part in hostilities. Their application in the context of modern asymmetrical conflict, however, raises profound challenges.

The principle of distinction requires parties to an armed conflict to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and to direct attacks only against the former. In asymmetrical conflicts, however, this distinction is frequently blurred. Guerrilla fighters and terrorists operate among civilian populations, using civilians as shields, wearing civilian clothing, and exploiting the protections afforded to civilians by IHL. This creates acute dilemmas for state forces, who must make targeting decisions under conditions of uncertainty, with the constant risk either of killing civilians through excessive caution or of committing violations through excessive force (Walzer, 2006).

The development of targeted killing programmes—in particular the extensive use of armed drones by the United States in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere—has generated intense legal and ethical debate. Proponents argue that targeted killing is a lawful and proportionate means of neutralising individuals who pose an imminent threat and who cannot be captured, conducted with precision that minimises civilian casualties relative to conventional military operations (Brennan, 2012). Critics contend that the legal framework governing such operations is opaque and inadequately scrutinised; that the empirical claims about precision and minimisation of civilian harm are contested; and that the political and strategic consequences—including the radicalisation of affected populations and the erosion of international legal norms—undermine the long-term objectives of counter-terrorism policy (Alston, 2010).

 

The Ethics of Asymmetrical Conflict

Beyond legal questions, modern warfare raises profound moral challenges. Just War theory, developed over centuries by theologians and philosophers including Augustine, Aquinas, and Grotius, and systematised in contemporary form by Michael Walzer (1977) and Jeff McMahan (2009), provides the most influential framework for moral evaluation of the decision to go to war (jus ad bellum) and the conduct of war (jus in bello). The application of just war criteria to asymmetrical conflicts—including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Gaza conflicts, and the Syrian civil war—has been deeply contested.

The doctrine of double effect, which permits actions that have both good and bad consequences provided that the bad consequences are foreseen but not intended and are proportionate to the good achieved, has been heavily deployed in debates about the killing of civilians in the course of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations. Critics such as McMahan (2009) have argued that the traditional framework, which evaluates the moral status of combatants solely by reference to their status rather than their individual culpability, is morally inadequate in the context of wars fought between state forces and non-state armed groups.

The use of autonomous weapons systems—sometimes described as "lethal autonomous weapons" or "killer robots"—represents perhaps the most acute moral frontier in contemporary debates about the ethics of warfare. The prospect of weapons capable of selecting and engaging targets without meaningful human control raises fundamental questions about moral responsibility, accountability, and the dignity of the individual in war (Arkin, 2009). The International Committee of the Red Cross (2021) has called for the establishment of legally binding limits on autonomous weapons systems, a position supported by many humanitarian organisations and a growing number of states, but resisted by major military powers—including the United States, Russia, and China—who regard autonomous systems as strategically important.

 

The Responsibility to Protect and Humanitarian Intervention

A further dimension of the legal and moral debates surrounding modern warfare is the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly at the 2005 World Summit. R2P affirms that states bear a primary responsibility to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, and that the international community has a responsibility to intervene—including through coercive means—when states fail or refuse to fulfil this obligation (ICISS, 2001).

The application of R2P has been deeply controversial. The NATO-led intervention in Libya in 2011, authorised by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 based on R2P, was initially welcomed as a test of the doctrine's operationalisation but became deeply divisive when the intervention was perceived by Russia, China, and others as going beyond the authorised mandate to protect civilians and effectively effecting regime change (Bellamy, 2011). The failure to invoke R2P effectively in Syria — where the Security Council was paralysed by great-power vetoes — illustrated the limits of the doctrine in the face of geopolitical competition. These experiences have generated a profound debate about the relationship between sovereignty, human rights, and the use of force in international relations.

Conclusion

Modern warfare and asymmetrical conflict pose extraordinary challenges to scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. The persistence of terrorism and guerrilla warfare reflects the enduring logic of asymmetrical strategy: the capacity of weaker actors to impose disproportionate costs on stronger adversaries through the exploitation of political vulnerabilities, popular support, and the limits of conventional military power. The emergence of cyber warfare as a domain of hostilities has further complicated the strategic landscape, creating new forms of vulnerability, new instruments of coercion, and new puzzles for deterrence and arms control. And the application of existing legal and moral frameworks to these novel forms of conflict has revealed deep tensions between the principles and the realities of modern armed conflict.

What is clear is that the existing frameworks—legal, strategic, and ethical—developed primarily in the context of conventional interstate conflict, are under severe strain. The Geneva Conventions, Just War theory, and the architecture of international security institutions were designed for a world of symmetrical state actors; their adaptation to the conditions of asymmetrical conflict, cyber hostilities, and autonomous weapons is incomplete and contested. Addressing these gaps requires sustained scholarly engagement, constructive diplomatic effort, and the political will to subordinate short-term strategic advantage to the longer-term imperatives of a rules-based international order. In the absence of such an effort, the costs—human, political, and civilisational—will continue to accumulate.

References

Alston, P. (2010). Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions: Study on targeted killings. United Nations Human Rights Council. A/HRC/14/24/Add.6.

Arkin, R. C. (2009). Governing lethal behavior in autonomous robots. CRC Press.

Arreguín-Toft, I. (2005). How the weak win wars: A theory of asymmetric conflict. Cambridge University Press.

Bellamy, A. J. (2011). Libya and the responsibility to protect: The exception and the norm. Ethics & International Affairs, 25(3), 263–269.

Brennan, J. O. (2012, April 30). The ethics and efficacy of the president's counterterrorism strategy. Speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC.

Burke, J. (2004). Al-Qaeda: The true story of radical Islam. Penguin Books.

Byman, D. (2015). Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the global jihadist movement: What everyone needs to know. Oxford University Press.

Fall, B. B. (2005). Street without joy: The French debacle in Indochina. Stackpole Books. (Original work published 1961)

Galula, D. (1964). Counterinsurgency warfare: Theory and practice. Praeger.

Herzog, S. (2011). Revisiting the Estonian cyber attacks: Digital threats and multinational responses. Journal of Strategic Security, 4(2), 49–60.

International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). (2001). The responsibility to protect. International Development Research Centre.

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). (2021). ICRC position on autonomous weapon systems. ICRC.

Kaldor, M. (2012). New and old wars: Organised violence in a global era (3rd ed.). Polity Press.

Libicki, M. C. (2009). Cyberdeterrence and cyberwar. RAND Corporation.

Mao Tse-tung. (1961). On guerrilla warfare (S. B. Griffith, Trans.). Praeger. (Original work published 1937)

McCants, W. (2015). The ISIS apocalypse: The history, strategy, and doomsday vision of the Islamic State. St Martin's Press.

McMahan, J. (2009). Killing in war. Oxford University Press.

Mueller, R. S. (2019). Report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election (Vols. 1–2). United States Department of Justice.

Rid, T. (2013). Cyber war will not take place. Hurst & Company.

Rid, T., & Buchanan, B. (2015). Attributing cyber attacks. Journal of Strategic Studies, 38(1–2), 4–37.

Sanger, D. E. (2012). Confront and conceal: Obama's secret wars and surprising use of American power. Crown Publishers.

Sanger, D. E., & Perlroth, N. (2021, January 2). New details emerge about the breach of SolarWinds and the US government. The New York Times.

Schmid, A. P. (Ed.). (2011). The Routledge handbook of terrorism research. Routledge.

Walzer, M. (1977). Just and unjust wars: A moral argument with historical illustrations. Basic Books.

Walzer, M. (2006). Terrorism and just war. Philosophia, 34(1), 3–12.

Watling, J., & Reynolds, N. (2022). Ukraine through Russia's eyes. Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Special Report.

[Part 22]

[Part 20]

Bahasa

Reallocating Official Remuneration for Indonesian Social Resilience

The proposal to cut officials' salaries often surfaces as a gesture of national solidarity during times of economic distress. However, to evaluate its effectiveness in easing the burden on the State Budget, we must scrutinise the underlying fiscal realities. Let us examine this proportionally. It should be noted that the figures considered are estimates based on the components of Basic Salary and Fixed Allowances funded by the state.

Sectoral Analysis of Official Remuneration

If we apply a more aggressive fifty per cent reduction to the 580 Members of the House of Representatives, the annual savings would climb from ninety billion to approximately two hundred and twenty-five billion rupiah. This represents a more substantial figure, yet it remains a fraction of the total legislative budget. Within the executive branch, applying this half-salary cut to the 107 Ministers and Deputy Ministers would increase the savings to roughly eleven to twelve billion rupiah annually. While this is a symbolic milestone, it highlights that even a radical reduction at the cabinet level does not yield massive fiscal relief due to the relatively small number of personnel. The most significant shift occurs when targeting the thousands of Senior Civil Servants (Echelon I and II); a fifty per cent cut here could potentially save the Treasury upwards of six hundred and thirty billion rupiah per year, as the sheer volume of high-ranking bureaucrats creates a much larger cumulative base.

The State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) Sector: Directors and Commissioners

The impact becomes far more pronounced within the SOE sector. Given that executive compensation in state firms—particularly in banking and energy—is considerably higher than in the civil service, a fifty per cent reduction in remuneration and bonuses for Directors and Commissioners would drastically improve corporate margins. Across the hundreds of state-owned entities and their subsidiaries, such a move could bolster the annual dividend contribution to the national treasury by an estimated two to three trillion rupiah. This confirms that the SOE sector remains the most effective "lever" for generating actual revenue through compensation reform, far outweighing the direct savings from the central government's payroll.

The Overall Calculation

Under this radical fifty per cent scenario, the total cumulative benefit—combining direct savings from the legislature and bureaucracy with increased dividends from SOEs—would reach an estimated three to four trillion rupiah per annum. Even at this heightened level, the fiscal reality remains sobering: three trillion rupiah covers less than one per cent of the annual energy subsidy requirements if oil prices remain volatile. Therefore, whilst a fifty per cent cut would provide a significantly stronger "sense of crisis" and perhaps satisfy public demand for austerity, it still fails to serve as a primary solution for balancing the State Budget. The true utility of the policy remains psychological and political; it functions as a prerequisite for social stability, ensuring that when the government eventually asks the public to endure higher costs, it does so with the moral authority of having first halved its own top-tier expenditure.

The issue of dual office-holding 

The issue of dual office-holding (commonly referred to as double dipping) represents one of the most contentious points in the debate over fiscal efficiency in Indonesia. Both ethically and fiscally, allowing an individual to draw full compensation from two or more state-funded sources during an economic crisis is widely seen as an affront to the principle of social justice.

To address the situation of Deputy Ministers or other high-ranking officials holding multiple positions (such as serving as a Deputy Minister while also acting as a State-Owned Enterprise Commissioner), the following policies could be implemented:

1. Implementation of a "Single Salary System"

The most radical yet arguably fairest policy would be to mandate that officials choose only one source of income.

Mechanism: The official would continue to perform both roles (e.g., Deputy Minister and Commissioner) but would only be permitted to receive the salary and allowances from the position with the higher nominal value.

Benefit: This eliminates the perception that public office is being utilised for the personal accumulation of wealth from multiple state coffers.

2. Elimination of Basic Salary for the Secondary Position

If the first policy is deemed too extreme given the increased workload, the government could enforce a rule whereby for the second position, the official is only entitled to a duty allowance or honorarium, without the basic salary or other fixed benefits.

Mechanism: The basic salary remains paid by the home ministry, whilst at the SOE, they would only receive attendance incentives or a small percentage of tantiem (profit-sharing bonuses).

3. Cumulative Income Ceiling

The government could establish a maximum threshold for the total income an official is permitted to receive from all concurrent roles.

Mechanism: For instance, the total combined income from a ministerial post and a commissionership must not exceed 150% of a minister's standard salary. Any excess beyond this cap would either remain unpaid or be returned to the national treasury. 

4. Absolute Prohibition of Dual Office-Holding in the Commercial Sector

This approach is more structural than a mere salary cut. The government could strictly prohibit active public officials (Deputy Ministers or Senior Bureaucrats) from serving as commissioners in SOEs.

Argument: Beyond saving the budget, this aims to eliminate conflicts of interest and ensure the official is 100% focused on their bureaucratic duties within the ministry.

5. Transparency and Voluntary Reversion

In the short term, the government could issue a moral appeal for those holding multiple positions to voluntarily return a portion of their earnings to the state as a gesture of empathy. This should be accompanied by public transparency regarding who has made such contributions.

The problem of dual office-holding is not merely a matter of figures on a ledger; it is a question of public ethics. Cutting a minister's salary loses all credibility if, at the same time, deputy ministers or senior officials continue to receive "double pay" that may be several times higher than the minister's own basic salary.

A policy of "Single Salary" or a Prohibition of Dual Office-Holding is the most effective way to demonstrate that the government truly possesses a sense of crisis.

To provide an even more comprehensive fiscal outlook, let us incorporate the Ministerial Operational Funds (Dana Operasional) into the analysis. Unlike the basic salary, these funds are significantly larger and intended for the execution of duties, yet they represent a substantial area for potential austerity.

It should be noted that the figures considered are estimates based on the components of Basic Salary, Fixed Allowances, and, for the executive branch, a significant reduction in discretionary operational budgets.

Sectoral Analysis of Official Remuneration and Operational Funds

When we look beyond the 580 Members of the House of Representatives—whose fifty per cent salary cut yields two hundred and twenty-five billion rupiah—the focus shifts dramatically toward the executive's operational expenditure. For the 107 Ministers and Deputy Ministers, the basic salary is merely the "tip of the iceberg." Ministerial Operational Funds can reach upwards of one hundred to one hundred and fifty million rupiah per month. If we were to slash these operational budgets by half, alongside the fifty per cent salary cut, the savings from the Cabinet alone would leap from a mere twelve billion to approximately one hundred billion rupiah per annum. Extending this logic to the thousands of Senior Civil Servants (Echelon I and II), who also command significant official travel and meeting budgets, a fifty per cent reduction in both their take-home pay and their departmental "activity" budgets could realistically save the Treasury in excess of two trillion rupiah annually. 

The State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) Sector: Directors and Commissioners

The SOE sector remains the most potent source of fiscal recovery in this scenario. By halving the remuneration, bonuses, and "representation allowances" of Directors and Commissioners across the vast network of state firms, the resulting reduction in corporate overheads would be immense. Given the commercial scale of these entities, such a radical austerity measure could bolster the national treasury through increased dividend payments by an estimated three to five trillion rupiah. This confirms that the most significant fiscal gains are found where state-owned commercial interests and high-level bureaucratic activity budgets intersect, rather than in the basic payroll of elected officials alone.

The Overall Calculation

Under this expanded and radical fifty per cent austerity scenario—which now includes both salaries and a portion of operational/activity funds—the total cumulative benefit to the state could reach an estimated five to seven trillion rupiah per annum. Whilst seven trillion rupiah is a formidable sum, it must be viewed against the backdrop of the energy subsidy burden, which can fluctuate by tens of trillions based on a minor shift in oil prices or the exchange rate. Therefore, even this maximalist approach covers only a small fraction of the fiscal gap created by global economic volatility. Nevertheless, the inclusion of "Operational Funds" in the cuts transforms the policy from a merely symbolic gesture into a more credible fiscal strategy. It signals that the leadership is not only sacrificing personal income but is also committed to streamlining the very machinery of government, thereby strengthening the moral authority required to navigate a national economic crisis.

To provide a definitive perspective on the impact of these measures, let us reallocate the projected seven trillion rupiah in maximalist savings toward specific social welfare programmes. This demonstrates how "official sacrifice" can be transformed into a tangible public benefit.

It should be noted that the figures considered are estimates based on a fifty per cent reduction in Basic Salary, Fixed Allowances, and for the executive branch, a significant reduction in discretionary Operational Funds.

Strategic Reallocation of Savings

If the state successfully recoups seven trillion rupiah through these radical austerity measures, the impact on the National Budget (APBN) remains fiscally modest but socially transformative. For instance, seven trillion rupiah could fund the National Health Insurance (JKN/BPJS) premiums for approximately fifteen million low-income citizens for an entire year. Alternatively, these funds could be redirected to the Education Sector, providing full annual scholarships for roughly seven hundred thousand underprivileged university students, effectively securing the human capital of the next generation. In the context of infrastructure, this sum is sufficient to construct or rehabilitate thousands of kilometres of rural roads, directly lowering logistics costs for small-scale farmers who are hardest hit by rising fuel prices.

The Socio-Economic Trade-off

While the seven trillion rupiah saved does not solve the macro-economic challenge of a five-hundred-trillion-rupiah energy subsidy, it bridges the gap in "micro-protection." By shifting funds from the upper echelons of the bureaucracy—specifically the high-yield SOE Sector and Ministerial Operational Funds—to grassroots welfare, the government creates a powerful narrative of redistribution. This prevents the "sense of crisis" from becoming a "crisis of trust." The primary benefit of this reallocation is not the stabilisation of the exchange rate or the global oil price, but the mitigation of poverty and the preservation of purchasing power for the most vulnerable segments of society.

The Overall Calculation

In final summary, the cumulative benefit of a fifty per cent cut across the legislature, cabinet, senior civil service, and SOE leadership—when coupled with operational fund reductions—yields a fiscal "war chest" of five to seven trillion rupiah. Although this represents only about one to two per cent of the total deficit caused by currency and commodity volatility, its targeted application can provide a safety net for millions. Therefore, the policy serves as a vital bridge: it does not fix the macro-economy, but it provides the moral and financial capital required to protect the micro-economy. It ensures that while the state navigates global turbulence, the burden is shared from the top down, rather than from the bottom up.

In conclusion, while a radical fifty per cent reduction in the salaries and operational funds of Indonesia's political and bureaucratic elite offers limited fiscal relief against the gargantuan scale of global commodity volatility, its true value lies in its profound socio-political resonance. Generating an estimated five to seven trillion rupiah, such measures would cover less than two per cent of the national energy subsidy burden. Nevertheless, the strategic reallocation of these funds—potentially securing healthcare for fifteen million citizens or providing scholarships for seven hundred thousand students—transforms a symbolic gesture into a tangible lifeline for the most vulnerable. It is a policy that prioritises moral authority over mere accounting, ensuring that the state does not ask the public to endure hardship without first demonstrating a profound sacrifice from the top down.

Ultimately, the effectiveness of this proposal must be measured not by its ability to balance the national ledger, but by its capacity to preserve social cohesion. By streamlining the high-yield SOE sector and curtailing discretionary ministerial spending, the government signals a genuine "sense of crisis" that bridges the gap between the governing and the governed. In an era of economic turbulence, this redistribution of resources serves as a vital safeguard for the micro-economy, fostering the collective trust necessary to navigate systemic challenges. It is a testament to the principle that in times of national trial, the burden of leadership is best demonstrated through shared austerity and redistributive justice.

[Bahasa]