While I generally disagree with Francis Fukuyama's apprehensions toward enhancement on the basis that altering the human condition could weaken any claims to basic human rights¹, it is not difficult to understand that elevating a soldier's tolerance for pain will change the criteria for what counts as torture and redraw the boundaries of moral permissibility².

The likelihood of “cyborg ethics” diverging from conventional human ethics with regards to warfare has led to concerns that enhanced soldiers may be seen as more expendable. Historically, however, military efforts to increase the robustness of its soldiers have usually been motivated by a desire to minimize casualties among their own ranks.

For instance, recall the image of the Roman legionnaire—a large rectangular shield, a thick and sturdy iron helmet, breastplate, pauldrons, and grieves. He was extremely well protected even though his heavy armor restricted his agility and made it impossible for him to pursue retreating enemies. Most well-established armies up until the time of the Napoleonic Wars, in equipping and fortifying their soldiers, thought it much more important to minimize their own casualties than to maximize those of the enemy³.

During the era of intensified nationalism beginning with the American and French revolutions, and ending with the advent of the Cold War in the late 1940's, the more 'cautious' philosophies toward warfare typical among the agrarian empires of pre-modern times fell out of style as the pretexts for initiating total war shifted from economic to ideological justifications. After 1945, the cutthroat war paradigms of the early industrial era championed by Napoleon and Clausewitz were tempered by the fear that conflict escalation could led to nuclear war.

The Cold War also suppressed many potential smaller scale wars because neither the United States nor the Soviet Union would tolerate internal armed conflicts among nations within their respective blocs. Even among non-aligned nations such as India and Pakistan, the use of military force during the Cold War was seen as a grave decision with the potential for existential repercussions⁴.

Francis Fukuyama heralded “the end of history” with the passing of the Cold War⁵, but today the United States military faces novel predicaments as the world's only superpower. While nuclear conflict is still opposed as vehemently as ever, many of the de facto alliances that held sway during the Cold War have become irrelevant and we have witnessed a resurgence of nationalistic and ideological conflicts among non-nuclear regional militaries.

Even in light of the War on Terror and the United States notoriety for aspiring to be the 'world police', I would still argue that the US military's ability to intervene in these regional conflicts is relatively constrained by a strong public aversion to any US casualties. It seems fitting then, that Fukuyama would retract his statement about the end of history after becoming aware of the transhumanist movement and witnessing the advent of enhanced soldiers and drones that act effectively as avatars for soldiers to fight battles remotely⁶.

Despite his alarmist tone, in his 2004 article in Foreign Policy magazine, in which he dubbed transhumanism “the world's most dangerous idea⁷”, Fukuyama may have been prescient in foreseeing the potential for military cybernetics to offset this new power equilibrium. Considering the proliferation of drones, and the increasing sophistication of human enhancement technologies, it is feasible that the US military will soon free itself from the political shackles deterring heightened levels of intervention in regional conflicts. In a sense, human enhancement can be seen as the modern-day equivalent of the heavily armored legionnaire of Roman times, and this new 'cyborg warfare' in some senses emulates the casualty-avoiding methods of pre-modern warfare.

​Image: io9