ABSTRACT
In the last decade, non-lethal weapons have become a buzzword in debates about new weapons technologies. These weapons have a considerable history in law enforcement, but they are mostly new for the military, where efforts have more often been focused on increasing rather than decreasing the lethality of weapons. The current military interest in non-lethal weapons is driven, in part, by a belief that the new types of war and peace-keeping missions, which unavoidably mingle civilians and uniformed military, require technologies that do not kill civilian bystanders. Moreover, some Democratic Peace theorists argue that in democratic states governments will desire to minimize lethality even for enemy combatants, if only to maintain public support for military engagement. By looking at funding levels and following the arguments for nonlethal weapons made by the military, one may gain some insight into how deeply rooted these arguments are in military thinking and whether they conform to the predictions of Democratic Peace theory.
