Defense Economics in Indonesian “Semesta” War Strategy

Abstract

The strategy of the Semesta War is part of an Indonesian National Defense System. The purpose of this study is to show that the strategy of the Semesta War was not a total war and was not just a guerrilla war, although guerrilla tactics were part of it. It is also different from the People’s War from Mao’s Strategy. So, what is Semesta War looks like? We can understand this strategy from Indonesian History. A Trikora operation was the largest military strike Indonesia had ever planned and titled, with the aim of a massive attack on the Dutch military forces in the land of West New Guinea. But rather than showing the Semesta War Strategy succeeded, The studies will show the impact of the Semesta War strategy from a Defense Economics perspective. The writing employs historical methods of heuristic criticism consisting of internal and external criticism and the historiography of history in which interpretation, exposition, and presentation from a literature study of the writings of the perpetrators of Trikora history. The results suggest that operation Trikora is one of the implementations of the Indonesia Semesta War Strategy, it was successful to achieve its strategic goal, but, with expensive sacrifice.