By: Christopher E. Sawin
Whether reading books or watching movies, such as RoboCop, The Terminator, and even X-Men, super soldiers have universally been considered somewhere between science-fiction and fantasy-fiction. However, until recently, the idea of creating an army of super soldiers, as war fighting killing machines may become a reality sooner than you may think. Essentially, super soldiers refer to genetically modified humans that are capable of producing super human abilities that typical humans cannot generate. One of the best examples of creating and utilizing a super soldier comes from the movie Captain America: The First Avenger. In this fantasy-fiction movie, a rejected military soldier is injected with a “Super-Soldier serum”, making him possess enhanced abilities including super human strength, agility, mental capacity, and even an enhanced immune system and metabolism. While those specific abilities have yet to be acquired by a human, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is in the process of developing an exoskeleton that would allow ordinary soldiers to run faster and further without exhaustion, as well as the ability to lift extreme amounts of weight, more than any Olympic athlete.
Currently, the United States Pentagon spends $400 million dollars annually researching and exploring ways to create super soldiers through human enhancement technology for various enhanced abilities. These abilities range anywhere from mind-controlling enhancement drugs to telepathy, to the ability to regrow lost limbs. In the past, DARPA granted $40 million to California and Pennsylvania Universities to develop mind and memory controlling implants. Additionally, DARPA also granted $9 million to the Institute for Preclinical Studies Texas A&M University to develop ways in which a soldier can survive life-threatening wounds despite losing significant amounts of blood. Just to put military technology into perspective, after the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States military had zero enhanced war-fighting machines, and now since 2008 there are a reported 12,000, leading towards the idea that a new era of using an army of super soldiers is on the horizon.
While creating a super soldier to fight wars and armed conflicts seems appealing, would doing so be considered a war crime by violating Article 35(2) of the Geneva Conventions? Article 35(2) grants the protection of civilian victims grasped in the twists of the violent effects caused by war and armed conflicts, to include civil wars and “high-intensity internal conflicts.” More specifically, Article 35(2) “prohibits[ed] . . . weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare of a nature that [to] cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.” Overall, Article 35(2) of the Geneva Conventions establishes a well-founded legal nucleus for the protection of war victims in the civilian population. With the idea of creating super soldiers with enhanced human abilities, and the DARPA actually designing an exoskeleton for physically enhance soldiers for warfare, could these enhanced abilities cause “cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering” to the civilian population and therefore making the use of super soldiers a war crime under the Geneva Conventions?
The nasty rigors of war caused by World War II was responsible for nearly 28 million civilian deaths and the Thirty Years’ War contributed to a 50% decline in the civilian population throughout Europe. Because of these specific wars, the Geneva Conventions was drafted and since been amended multiple times in order to enhance the protection of the civilian population during outbreaks of war and armed conflicts. The United States is not the only country to attempt to enhance traditional soldiers into super soldiers. As early as the turn of the nineteenth century, the Soviet Union sought to use DNA manipulation to cross breed humans with apes to create an army that would not easily die or complain by becoming resistant to pain and unconcerned about the quality of food they ate. According to Russia’s media outlets, mind-controlling exoskeletons may be available to the Russian Army by as early as 2020 where the soldiers wearing the enhanced suit will be controlled by brain waves and will possess the ability of super human strength and endurance. While creating enhanced human abilities specifically for soldiers does have some potential positive features, I think that the risk of collateral damage towards civilians is too great to justify using super soldiers as killing machines.
From all of this enhanced military technology pumping super human abilities into traditional soldiers, could these enhanced soldiers really do more harm than good? Is it possible that the super humans of the near future could cause such “superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering” to the civilian population as to render these super soldiers illegal and an ultimate war crime against the country creating and utilizing them?
My four years spent in the United States Marine Corps Infantry, coupled with two combat deployments overseas have provided me with a unique perspective on warfare. I do think that there are some potential positive aspects to creating enhanced soldiers, such as decreasing the amount of killed in action during wartime. However, until there are some precautions, studies, and strict standard operating procedures for how super soldiers should be designed, manufactured, utilized, and eventually deployed, then it would be obtuse for any country to implement such an elite killing machine at this time.
Christopher Sawin is currently a 2L at Suffolk University Law School and a Staff Member of the Journal of High Technology Law. He holds a B.A. in Criminal Justice from Curry College and is a United States Marine Corps Veteran.
