A new arms race is underway. It’s not China’s satellite-shattering pissing match with the Bush administration. It involves neither Ahmadinejad nor Kim “I like Rambo” Jong Il. It’s not about Bunker Busters, Daisy Cutters or other Pentagon-ese euphemisms for ways to exterminate great quantities of people. This new arms race is being run by our government alone and its purpose is not to kill people. Last year, the Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review Report, signed by Donald “Freedom’s Untidy” Rumsfeld, called for spending to double on non-lethal weaponry. Although the idea that our military wants to “set phasers to stun” might sound like a hopeful sign, it’s not. The government’s growing arsenal of sci-fi style gadgets meant to dissuade instead of destroy does not herald a kinder, gentler American empire, just a smarter, more efficient and, if you ask me, much scarier one.

The new weapons come with their own Pentagon-ese euphemisms. How about a Vortex Ring Gun, which, to paraphrase the crypto-scientific argot used to describe it, disables “targets” with an “incapacitating agent” that can also “resonate with bodily organs” to increase the effect. Or how about a Modular Crowd Control Munition, a kind of mess-you-up-but-won’t-kill-you land mine. Or my personal favorite, the Active Denial System (ADS), otherwise known as the “Goodbye Gun” because it produces what researchers like to call the “Goodbye Effect,” described by Wired News as “Prompt and highly motivated escape behavior.” Developed by Raytheon, the “directed energy” device is set to make its debut in Iraq, where many of the new non-lethal weapons (NLWs) are being field tested. It looks like a complicated surveyor’s level with a serving tray mounted on its back. And it makes you feel like your skin is melting off.

Getting people to do what you want, or more accurately, getting them not to do what you don’t want, has always been a rather messy endeavor for governments. Ask the Romans how Pontius Pilate’s solution to Judea’s wackiest dissident worked out; or—for that matter—if feeding his dissident followers to lions had the desired effect. In recent years, states and their agents have turned to less “natural” media. Instead of starved jungle cats, they use rubber bullets, water cannons, and cattle prods. But each of these methods has its shortcomings. If you fire rubber bullets too high—say, at the head—or at too close a range, the whole non-lethal part gets tricky. Water cannons make a mess. And cattle prods… well, they’re cattle prods.

The Taser gun has been touted as the latest and greatest advance in the persuasive art of pain. Police departments have snapped up the little devils like our generation’s Billy clubs. At last, law and order types enthused, peacekeepers could subdue agitators without bloodshed or fuss. Just zap ‘em with a few (50,000) volts and voila, even the boldest would-be Eldridge Cleaver or Abby Hoffman will “assume the position”—at least after he stops twitching.

Alas, the Taser, too, has troubles. In 2005, The Palm Beach Post examined over 1000 police reports involving the device and the results were (please forgive me) shocking. A quarter of those tazed by Palm Beach’s finest were unarmed and not threatening violence; some of them were already handcuffed. More than 400 of the incidents were performed on suspects in misdemeanor crimes. Three of the tazees claimed to be pregnant and dozens were underage minors or senior citizens. Nationally, numerous deaths have been attributed to overzealous Taser use. And there’s also the problem of using a Taser on someone who has been pepper-sprayed, another popular “non-lethal” method. Taser a pepper-sprayed person and their head might catch fire.

Enter novel new methods like ADS and its “Goodbye Effect.” The weapon shoots so-called “millimeter” waves—longer than x-rays but shorter than microwaves. I know what you’re thinking: They want to microwave people? Isn’t that dangerous? Don’t worry, Mr. Peacenik! After 10 years and $40 million, Raytheon and its government sponsors say almost all of the radiation is absorbed by the top 1/64th of an inch of a person’s skin. And as for eye damage, ADS backers have assured reporters that the effect of the beam is so painful, no one can look at it long enough without closing their eyes or turning away. That’s right—it’s so painful, it can’t possibly be dangerous.

Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of ahimsa—or total non-violence—worked so well because his adversaries in South Africa and later British-controlled India reacted to it with unmitigated brutality. It takes two to tango, as they say, and Gandhi always found enthusiastic dance partners in his colonial overlords. Same for Martin Luther King Jr., who adopted Gandhi’s methods. The virulence of his segregationist foes did just as much, if not more to advance his cause than any speech he ever gave. All those images of German shepherds tearing into marchers, Klansmen battering protesters at lunch counters, and water cannons throwing grandmothers onto the ground: that’s what shamed America, and the world, into listening to Dr. King’s message, the sight of violence, raw and unfiltered, and the zeal of its perpetrators. The friends of Jim Crow “kept it real.” If you tried to change things, you got hurt, bad.

Now, imagine something like the “Goodbye Gun” back in those days, or the days of Gandhi’s great movement. An invisible beam, fired at great distances, causing insuperable pain and “highly motivated escape behavior.” How would that have played in Life magazine? Would Gandhi’s great Salt March to the sea have made it 10 feet, let alone 200 some miles, with millimeter waves boring into the pilgrims’ flesh? A surgical strike, indeed. Coming soon to a street protest near you.

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JB Powell lives in San Francisco. His novel, The Republic, is available from Livingston Press or at Amazon.