On a Novel Method of Conducting a War, or: Sleepytime Warfare

There are few who will deny that warfare is a grim and grizzly affair. This is for a number of reasons, but if one primary downside to war could be isolated, we think everyone knows what it would be.
Perhaps it was John Hammond, of Jurassic Park fame, who put it best: "People. Are. Dying."

So war is nasty. Most who realize this call for an end to war in general, but experience has shown this to be impractical due to the insidious nature of global politics and, arguably, human nature itself. People will always say "give peace a chance," and then leaders will say "okay, sounds good," and then later double back and explain that "it's just pretty necessary right now is all."

If war is a feature that refuses to be removed from existence, we propose an alternate solution: to change that feature rather than fail to remove it. If dying is the nastier part of war, then war without death would be a desirable alternative. This can be accomplished with chloroform.

Chloroform warfare would involve two sides battling with supplies of rags and chloroform. Unarmed combat would ensue, resulting in no more than some bruises and at most a broken limb, in order to force one's rag into the opponent's face and cause him to fall asleep. At the end of the battle, the winning side would have more people awake and therefore be able to drag the opposing side away from their fortification or what have you.

Administering chloroform is a delicate operation. Too little causes mere dizziness, and too much can cause death. Two likely opposing arguments are:

1. That soldiers may still kill their opponents, be it through lack of skill or under orders to reduce the number of enemies for a later battle.
   
2. That some sort of chloroform arms race would ensue and armies would attempt to build better and better means of deploying the stuff, i.e. chloroform bombs and grenades, launchers, etc.

This is why each soldier's chloroform must be imbued with a unique tracer, and killing is strictly outlawed in such a war. The charge would be murder, or perhaps manslaughter if the soldier can prove the death was accidental. Indeed, many opponents of war would be happy with this, as they already often say that a war-killing and murder are one in the same. Note that tracers would be benign and degrade within a few months.

The resulting procedure is as follows: when a man is found dead on the battlefield, an autopsy is performed to determine if he indeed died of chloroform overdose. If so, the tracer is found. It is possible that, say, soldiers A and B both chloroformed this man. Perhaps soldier A did first, and did so properly, and soldier B, perhaps having a personal grudge against the victim, arrived and gave him more. The tracers would coat the lungs in the order in which they were administered, and in a quantity proportional to the amount of chloroform. It could therefore be seen if soldier A overdosed the victim, or of he dosed him properly and then soldier B administered an unnecessary dosage that pushed him into death.

If no tracer is found, but the cause of death is chloroform, the commander of the opposing outfit is charged for allowing one of his men to use untraced chloroform. This would keep commanders on their toes about regulating all chloroform in their unit. Some may call this unfair, as it is hard for one commander to keep a close eye on every one of his men, but it is a lot more fair than people dying in war the way it happens today. Becoming a commander of any sort should be a big responsibility, and anyone who becomes one should either really want to despite the risk, or be afraid of their responsibility (also because of the risk) and therefore more careful and watchful with their power. It is likely that units would be smaller and armies would self-regulate very strictly because of this.

There would likely be some kinks to work out as the world got accustomed to this new system of warfare. This is inevitable but necessary; to once again borrow from the wisdom of John Hammond, "When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked!"