The Biotech Soldier: America's Future Warrior?

March/April 2006 Historically Speaking 45 warrior spirit in Western armed forces. But I depart from him in my analysis by placing greater emphasis on the social and political dimension and less on the technological develWWl British recruitment poster, printed by Turner & Dunnett, London & Liverpool, 1915. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-USZC4-10907]. opments that he fears will inhibit the warrior's sense ofheroism. The spirit ofthe hero will be dampened by social forces as the armed forces become more like the civilian world. Coker resembles a latter day Oswald Spengler in his gloomy prognosis . I have enough optimism and historical confidence to believe that the intoxicating potential of pharmaceutical, computer, and genetic technologies will not be realized to the extent that Coker predicts. In future wars ofa quite different character, which might demand greater commitment and sacrifice than the wars of the present, the spirit of the warrior will reassert itself. Why do I believe this? The answer is simple: the weapons (or instruments of war) might change, but the nature of humankind remains constant. In his novel An Instinctfor War Roger Spiller includes a Japanese colonel, who observes of the RussoJapanese War of 1905 that as the Europeans employed increasing numbers of machines, so "their armies try more and more to make themselves into machines. That is the spirit of modern war, and we must submit to it if we are to take our place in the new world." Yet the human spirit has not submitted in the past and nor will it in the future.5 Brian Holden Reid is professor of American history and military institutions and head ofthe Department of War Studies at King's College London. His has recently completed a three-volume history ofthe American Civil War. 1 For superb discussions ofboth, see Roger J Spiller, "Man Against Fire: Audie Murphy and his War," in Joseph G Dawson III, ed., The Texas Military Experience: From the Revolution through World War II (Texas A&M University Press, 1995), 137-144; Peter Maslowski and Don Winslow, Lookingfor a Hero: StaffSergeantJoe Ronnie Hooper and the Vietnam War (University ofNebraska Press, 2004) 2 Maslowski and Winder, Lookingfor a Hero, 145-48 3 Barry R Posen, The Sources ofMilitary Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Cornell University Press, 1984), 54-57. 4 Michael Sherry, "Patriotic Orthodoxy and American Decline," in Edward Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, eds., History Wars (Henry Holt, 1996), 106. 5 Roger Spiller, An Instinctfor War (Harvard University Press, 2005), 254. The Biotech Soldier: America's Future Warrior? Peter S. Kindsvatter Christopher Coker has written a thought provoking essay on the future warrior of the Western world. Of necessity, that entails a prediction of what warfare will be like. What will that warrior of the future have to face? Soldiers, military theorists , and a variety of scholars have not shied away from making such predictions, in many cases from an earnest desire to prepare their countries and their militaries for what lies ahead. The too-often heard cliché, "An army always prepares to fight the last war," is simply not true in many cases. And as Coker's essay indicates, today's American military is making a considerable effort to understand and prepare for future conflict. The problem with such predictions about future war is that they have varied from off base to abysmally wrong. None have been more wrong, unfortunately, than those predicting an end to war. English publicist Norman Angeli, for example, in his widely read book The Great Illusion, published in 1909 and revised in 1912, argued persuasively that war 46 Historically Speaking March/April 2006 in a modern commercial and industrial world would be counterproductive, to say the least. War would ruin, not enhance, a modern nation's trade and finances, which are interdependent with that of other countries. Furthermore, the people ofmodern nations are "losing the psychological impulse to war .... How can modern life, with its overpowering proportion ofindustrial activities and its infinitesimal proportion of military, keep alive the instincts associated with war as against those developed by peace?"1 That the instincts of war were still alive and well, however, was painfully evident two...