"Non-Lethal Force Could Be the Future of Warfare" Topic

""Killing people and destroying things for some political purpose" is how prominent defense scholar Richard Betts describes the essence of military force. Betts' description reflects the pervasive view of military force held by most military and foreign policy experts. However, it does not account for a variety of non-lethal options that policy makers will have to consider using in future conflicts.

America's use of conventional military force since World War II has achieved mixed political results. In the future, the traditional instruments of national power may be even less effective because of America's domestic problems and shifts in the geopolitical environment. These conditions will force security experts to develop new approaches to national power projection. As America struggles to maintain its position in the international system, it will be faced with the dilemma that its expensive military tools may not be appropriate for the political task at hand.

The ultimate objective of using military force is to apply enough pressure to the targeted state to compel it to accept an outcome favorable to the aggressor. Historically, applying pressure in great power wars resulted in the deaths of millions of civilians. David Rothkopf notes that during World War II hardly any Americans objected to the incineration of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians, and throughout the Cold War few objected to the principle of killing on an even wider scale in retaliation for a Soviet attack. Today, post-Cold War norms and Pentagon lawyers have put those ideas out of bounds and that type of thinking is no longer deemed legitimate. The decline in casualty rates during interstate conflicts clearly reflects the shift in global norms…"
Full article here.
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Amicalement
Armand

Would be nice … but guys like AQ, the Taliban, Jihadists, Sami Pirates, etc. may not want to play by the same rules … as if one noticed, they don't now any way …

The only way to really win a war for good is to totally kill or enslave the other side. Something counties and people need to relearn. Other wise you will just have to fight the war again and again.

Hazza, draw beach noodles, steady advance, charge, hit em hard lads, your weapons are not toys! use em. Sheesh. Peace is won by overwhelming force not by sad assed lawyers.

I'm a proponent of non- and less-than-lethal weapons development, but not because of any legal niceties, but because it makes good sense for SASO, etc.

There are plenty of places on earth (AfPak, sub-Saharan Africa, etc.) where armed resistance is motivated by family/tribal affiliations and revenge killings. Killing the one genuinely hostile jackhole functionally requires his cousins to take up arms against you, ad nauseum.

Incapacitating and incarcerating, on the other hand, generally doesn't provoke the same sort of response. That means you aren't creating four problems for every problem you kill.

The trick is to make those weapons as/more effective on the battlefield than their equivalent strictly-lethal varieties. It's not there yet, but it can be.

The first folks who should receive effective non-lethal weapons are police and paramilitary types. The typical LAPD officer shouldn't be relying on "I can kill you or I can do nothing" options. It's great to have SWAT as backup, but it would be better if regular patrols could solely rely on effective non-lethal options. Would cut down on the "Oh, that was a child with a toy" and "suicide by cop" incidents.

Yea, the issue with that is "repeat offenders".

Even now, on the lethal battlefield, we've caught a lot of troops who quickly surrender, and then when we release them on humanitarian grounds, they come back again at us, to kill again.

Seems rather stupid to me to permit them to do that, in wartime, but logic seems to have gone out of favor to political correctness, and compassion.

I'm definitely not in favor of permitting enemy combatants to drop their weapons when they lose the tactical advantage, just to pick them up again and shoot us in the back, when we aren't looking, or are complacent.

I'm definitely not in favor of permitting enemy combatants to drop their weapons when they lose the tactical advantage, just to pick them up again and shoot us in the back, when we aren't looking, or are complacent.

Nor am I, nor is that what I'm suggesting.

Nor are you, I'm sure, advocating summary execution of all EPWs. Post-WWII Europe would have looked considerably different, as would the post-ACW South.

We would've torn the damnyankees a new one. It was by the grace of God and Lee that we didn't engage in sustained guerilla warfare.

Just a shame Link-Con didn't take a bullet in the brain a few years earlier.

/end_anger