FUTURE WAR: Non-Lethal Weapons in 21st Century Warfare.

• Author: Easterbrook, Gregg
• Position: Review

FUTURE WAR: Non-Lethal Weapons in 21st Century Warfare By John Alexander St. Martin's, $24.95

When U.S. soldiers staged their ill-fated attempt to rescue American hostages from Iran in April 1980, word circulated in Washington that they weren't actually carrying guns. Commentators and pundits were so stunned by the notion that the God-fearing President Jimmy Carter had ordered the use of force that they assumed there must have been some other plan. Soldiers and air crews, rumor had it, were equipped with a top-secret knockout gas that would have incapacitated any Iranian resistance harmlessly. This story was received credibly in Washington establishment circles until photographs of wrecked helicopters showed machine guns mounted in their doors. It turned out that operational details for the final hours of the planned raid included diversionary bombing attacks on Iranian military targets while Air Force gunships circled the rescue site, "hosing down" the streets with 40mm cannon fire to kill anything that moved. A nonlethal raid? Not exactly.

Of course, planners for the 1980 raid might have incorporated nonlethal weapons, if they'd had them. The same goes for planners for the 1983 invasion of Grenada, the 1989 attack on Panama, the 1991 Gulf war, the 1993 Somalia and Haiti operations, the 1995 Bosnia occupation, the 1999 campaign against Serbia, and the list goes on. Military commanders can't use nonlethal weapons because they basically don't have any, other than tear gas and rubber bullets, which are useful for breaking up crowds but not in battle. Except in the movies, there is nothing remotely close to knockout gas.

John Alexander, a retired Army colonel with experiences as varied as Green Beret commands in Vietnam and a stint at the Council on Foreign Relations, hopes that will change. His Future War is a timely, intriguing book, one that advocates a broad-reaching American commitment to develop and field nonlethal weapons. Generally the book offers a serious argument, though Future War does contain so many references to science-fiction movies that it sometimes veers toward silly. Alexander, who's apparently done some Hollywood consulting, comes perilously to suggesting that if something has been in a Michael Crichton movie, that shows it can actually exist: a pointed lapse in logic for an otherwise earnest work.

Alexander thinks nonlethal arms make sense for two reasons: First because technology is making them possible, second because...