Brian Rappert - Non-lethal Weapons as Legitimising Forces?: Technology, Politics and the Management of Conflict

Non-lethal Weapons as Legitimising Forces?: Technology, Politics and the Management of Conflict — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Non-lethal Weapons as Legitimising Forces?: Technology, Politics and the Management of Conflict" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...76

NON-LETHAL WEAPONS AS
LEGITIMIZING FORCES?

NON-LETHAL WEAPONS
AS LEGITIMIZING
FORCES?

Technology, Politics and the
Management of Conflict

BRIAN RAPPERT
University of Nottingham

Foreword by
Frank Barnaby

FRANK CASS
LONDONPORTLAND, OR

First published in 2003 in Great Britain by
FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS
Crown House, 47 Chase Side
London N14 5BP

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledges
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

and in the United States of America by
FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS
c/o ISBS, 920 NE 58th Avenue, Suite 300
Portland, Oregon 972133786
Website: www.frankcass.com

Copyright 2003 Brian Rappert

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Rappert, Brian
Non-lethal weapons as legitimizing forces?: technology,
politics and the management of conflict
1. Nonlethal weaponsPolitical aspects 2. Nonlethal weapons
Case studies 3. Conflict managementEvaluation
I. Title
355.82

ISBN 0-203-01040-X Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-7146-5440-X (cloth)
ISBN 0-7146-8360-4 (paper)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rappert, Brian.
Non-lethal weapons as legitimizing forces?: technology, politics,
and the management of conflict/Brian Rappert.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7146-5440-X (cloth)
1. Nonlethal weaponsGovernment policy. I. Title.
U795. R37 2003
355.8dc21 2003040935

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in orintroduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the priorwritten permission of the publisher of this book.

Illustrations

FIGURES

TABLES

PLATES

Between pages 114 and 115:

Foreword

On first sight, non-lethal weapons are attractive. Surely it is better to only temporarily injure someone than kill him or her. However, if misused, so-called non-lethal weapons kill. For example, as shown in Vietnam and Northern Ireland, riot-control incapacitating gases such as tear gas and CN can kill if used in confined spaces. And the use of rubber bullets and stun guns has often caused fatalities.

History shows that weaponslethal and non-lethaloften do not work in the ways their manufacturers claim. We have, for example, seen how frequently precision-guided weapons, designed to reduce collateral damage, fail to hit their targets.

Non-lethal weapons raise important questions about how death and injury should be weighed, bringing in judgements about the value of life and the legitimacy of weapons. Most people would disapprove of the use of, for example, laser weapons to blind troops, regarding them as inhumane weapons.

One wonders about the non-lethal weapons now being researchedsuch as acoustic infrasound weapons, designed to nauseate and disorientate; electromagnetic pulse beams, designed to increase body temperatures to intolerable levels by heating water under the skin; and a variety of chemical agents and psychotropic drugs, to induce hallucinations, anxiety and fatigue by targeting specific cells in the brain.

In particular, the development of genetically engineered microbes and psychopharmological drugs for use as future human incapacitants will raise serious and difficult questions about the definition of biological weapons and the scope of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. Just how benign will these non-lethal weapons be? Not very, argues Brian Rappert in Non-lethal Weapons and Legitimizing Forces?

Non-lethal weapons raise important questions about the legitimacy of the use of force. These questions should be addressed in relation to future developments in national, regional and global security. Security at all levels will have to be fundamentally redefined to take into account future threats that will have evolved from a variety of global problems.

The most serious security problems will arise from the rapidly growing world population and the widening gap between rich and poor countries. This gap is likely to have increased North-South tension to such an extent that it will be greater than East-West tension ever was.

According to UNDP, a quarter of the todays worlds population remains in severe poverty even though the global GDP is about $25 trillion. About a third of the people in the developing countries1.3 billion peoplelive on incomes of less than $1 a day. Nearly a billion people are illiterate. Well over a billion lack access to safe water. And nearly a third of the people in the least developed countries are not expected to survive to age 40. As populations grow it is unlikely that the gap between rich and poor countries will narrow significantly.

Security will have to be fundamentally redefined to take into account the effects of: environmental degradation; the debt crisis; the biodiversity crisis (a large fraction of existing species, possibly half, may be lost within the foreseeable future); global climate changes, brought about by global warming; and deforestation. All of these are exacerbating North-South tension and are already beginning to be seen as important elements in the security of the industrialised countries. And mounting pressures on nonrenewable resourcesfertile land, fish, and particularly waterare increasingly recognised as major future threats to the security of, and causes of conflict between, Third World countries, and are therefore threats to global security. These threats will become increasingly serious as time goes on.

Many of these threats to security arise from and are exacerbated by increases in population. According to demographers, the world population will probably increase from todays 5,300 million to about 7,200 million by the year 2010 and then increase to about 11,000 million by 2030. The bulk of the increase will occur in the Third World, and most of it will go into cities so that huge metropolises will be created, with populations of many tens, and even hundreds of millions of people.

Most of the inhabitants of these megacities will live in abject poverty in shantytowns with inadequate, or often no, access to medical services, safe water, food, clothing, and housing. They will have woefully inadequate supplies of energy and little access to useful education services. These conditions are just those in which urban violence and terrorism flourish.

Future terrorists and urban guerrillas will be able to acquire, through the global arms trade, sophisticated weapons at relatively low cost, including long-range ballistic missiles equipped with nuclear, chemical or biological warheads. They will also be able to deliver weapons of mass destruction by simpler methodsperhaps carried in ships.

Problems arising from a huge world population will dominate the security policies of all nations. The Earths finite carrying capacity will almost certainly be unable to cope adequately with such large numbers of people, even though technological advances are likely to allow a somewhat higher world population than todays to be supported. Unless drastic steps are taken soon, disasterswar, pestilence, and famineare inevitable. The potential for future violence and conflict is obvious.

Next page

1234567...76

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Non-lethal Weapons as Legitimising Forces?: Technology, Politics and the Management of Conflict»

Look at similar books to Non-lethal Weapons as Legitimising Forces?: Technology, Politics and the Management of Conflict. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Brian Martin

Nonviolence versus Capitalism

Nick Lewer

The Future of Non-Lethal Weapons: Technologies, Operations, Ethics and Law

Dan Saxon

Fighting Machines: Autonomous Weapons and Human Dignity

Brian M. Mazanec

The Evolution of Cyber War: International Norms for Emerging-Technology Weapons

Keith B. Payne

Laser Weapons in Space: Policy and Doctrine

Brian Rappert

How to Look Good in a War: Justifying and Challenging State Violence

Castner Brian

All the ways we kill and die: an elegy for a fallen comrade, and the hunt for his killer

Audrey Kurth Cronin

Power to the People: How Open Technological Innovation Is Arming Tomorrow’s Terrorists

Louis A. Del Monte

Genius Weapons: Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Weaponry, and the Future of Warfare

Alexander John B

Future War: Non-Lethal Weapons in Twenty-First-Century Warfare

Brian Madison Jones

Abolishing the Taboo. Dwight D. Eisenhower and American Nuclear Doctrine, 1945-1961

Brian Freemantle

A Mind to Kill

Discussion, reviews of the book Non-lethal Weapons as Legitimising Forces?: Technology, Politics and the Management of Conflict and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.