Non-lethal weapons raise political, ethical questions

It is an honorable soldier's ultimate nightmare: His comrades fall one by one, but no uniformed foe is in view, only plainclothes snipers intermingled with civilians.

Whether the city is Hue in Vietnam in 1968 or Mogadishu in Somalia in 1993, the painful choice remains the same--letting the enemy pick your troops apart unhindered, or shooting back in the certainty you will kill innocents.

It seems like an inescapable dilemma of war. But when U.S. troops returned briefly to Somalia in 1995 (to evacuate a U.N. mission), the Marines brought along an ad hoc array of "nonlethal weapons," from police favorites such as pepper spray to a high-tech piece of exotica called a "dazzling laser."

The Somalian ordeal kick-started intensive research into new weapons meant to incapacitate, but not kill. From the beginning, the obstacles to fielding these new weapons have stemmed less from the technological hurdles and more from the political ones. The Pentagon and the White House feared that the weapons' novel disabling effects would offend international opinion--or even international law.

The world community has long endeavored to limit the horrors of war by regulating nontraditional weapons. But, said retired Army Col. John Alexander, author of Future War: Non-Lethal Weapons in Twenty-First-Century Warfare, "we have tended to engage in very broad, sweeping legal considerations that eliminate [options] that will actually be lifesaving in the long run."

Like all else in war, "nonlethal" is in fact ambiguous. There are no guarantees. So-called rubber bullets (really rubber surrounding a metal core) can kill if they hit a person at close range or in the head; tear gas can start deadly fires; and a simple billy club can kill if swung too hard.

So the Marine-led Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate is experimenting with an array of innovative and hopefully safer systems: intolerable odors, irritating sounds, concussion grenades that stun rather than kill. Most controversial is the Active Denial System, a kind of militarized microwave that momentarily heats nerve cells in the skin to cause pain without lasting harm. "I was zapped with one of the prototypes," Alexander said. "It hurts."

But even these sophisticated technologies cannot make real the Star Trek fantasy of "Set phasers on stun." A weapon that safely flattens a healthy young fighter could give an elderly civilian next to him a heart attack, or cause lasting nerve damage in a newborn. And the long-term consequences of exposure are unclear. The Pentagon, for obvious reasons, has been none too anxious to publicize its research. Said Stephen Goose, director of the arms division at Human Rights Watch: "There should be greater light shed on these programs."

The technological problem--weapons designers cannot guarantee no harm--has led to a political problem. In Somalia in 1995, the Marines had lasers intended to momentarily dazzle any sniper firing from a building. By using the new weapon, the Marines would avoid the traditional solution of shooting back at every likely hiding place and possibly killing bystanders. But the United States was simultaneously negotiating an international ban on more powerful laser weapons that can blind people permanently. Neither military nor civilian officials wanted to blur the issue by using weapons that were designed, but not guaranteed, to blind temporarily. So although research continues to this day, the Marines were forbidden to use the dazzlers.

The resulting paradox is that it is legally dubious to dazzle people, absolutely forbidden to blind them, and OK to blow their heads off. In fact, international law forbids the use of certain weapons--tear gas, hollow-point bullets--on foreign troops that police forces routinely use on their own civilians. The logic seems perverse.

But it's not so simple, said Dominique Loye, a technical adviser at the Geneva headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross. "It's not really relevant if you say `nonlethal,' " he said, "because even with the normal weapons, the lethality is not 100 percent." In fact, military records show that only 25 percent of troops hurt by bullets or bombs actually die; 30 percent suffer some permanent disability; and 45 percent recover altogether. In this context, a "nonlethal" weapon that blinds or otherwise disables many of its victims looks less ethical.

But not a lot less. The military cannot guarantee zero harm from these weapons. But by the Red Cross's own statistics, any effect less than 25 percent killed and 30 percent maimed would be an improvement over soldiers simply blazing away while surrounded by civilians. The new technologies will never be perfect, but at least they could give troops another, less awful option.