Non Lethal Weapons As Legitimising Forces

As mankind finds ever more impious ways to kill and maim, some look to non-lethal weapons as a fix. Brian Rappert discusses the technologies involved and the ethics of, for example blinding someone with a laser, leaving them blind forever, versus killing them outright.

These essays explore the increase in interest in non-lethal weapons. Such devices have meant that many armed forces and law enforcement agencies are able to act against undesirables without being accused of acting in an inhumane way. Topics for discussion in this volume include: an overview of the future of non-lethal weapons; emerging non-lethal technologies; military and police operational deployment of non-lethal weapons; a scientific evaluation of the effectiveness of non-lethal weapons; changes in international law needed to take into account non-lethal technologies; developments in genomics leading to new chemical incapacitants; implications for arms control and proliferation; the role of non-lethal weapons in human rights abuses; conceptual, theoretical and analytical perspectives on the nature of non-lethal weapons development.

Laser weapons, optical munitions causing blinding, electrical stunners, infrasound beams to disorient people, repeat pulse microwave devices, and a whole range of new chemical weapons (super-corrosives, super-adhesives, anti-traction and embrittling substances) - the list of new generation, hi-tech anti-personnel and anti-materiel ̃weaponry is a long one. These so-called non-lethal weapons are the subject of this remarkable book on an arms race which the general public has hardly yet heard of.

Non-lethal weapons take many forms – from rubber bullets to electroshock and long-range acoustic devices – which their proponents argue are ethical, legal, and humane. Social scientists, historians, legal scholars, and activists have long challenged the use of non-lethal weapons in policing and war. Until now, little scholarly attention has been paid to the social, historical, and legal relations that animate the concept of non-lethality, nor is there a comprehensive account of how the concept has achieved social and political acceptance. Disarming Intervention tells the story of how the concept of non-lethality emerged in a series of nineteeth-century legal codes that governed the conduct of international hostilities, and how it continued to legitimate US-led armed conflicts as ethical, legal, and humane throughout the twentieth century.

Techniques for reducing casualties, torture devices, tools for conflict resolution, or the technology of political control? Ostensibly the major impetus for the development of 'non-lethal' weapons has been to apply force without causing permanent injury or death, thereby reducing the need for lethal force. This book sheds light on a more complex story, with varied drivers, contradictory policy, premeditated and unanticipated results, and challenges to social, ethical and legal norms. With particular attention to the ongoing development of drugs, lasers, microwaves, and acoustics as incapacitating weapons, it provides an up-to-date analysis of the key technologies and weapons programmes, and highlights the major policy issues and concerns. There has been much conjecture about new and emerging 'non-lethal' weapons. This book separates what is known from the speculation about developments at this intersection of technology and weapons development.

Contains more than 140 essays that provide information about weaponry, tactics, and models of warfare since ancient times and examine the way they have been expressed socially, politically, and artistically; and includes research tools, time lines, maps, and illustrations.