Abstract

In this paper I will analyze several cases from the American Civil War, the two World Wars and the American Vietnam War, and contemporary research in enhancement substance, to determine how drug use can be analyzed and understood in both physical and moral (ethical) terms. This will require a discussion of drug use at different levels. First, I will address the consequences of drug use for the physical and mental sanity of soldiers, during and after wartime, irrespective of the reason for drug use. Second, I will look into the moral questions related to drug use for the enhancement of soldiers, that is, as a method for modern warfare. The moral dimension has at least two different angles: (i) the moral responsibility of superiors administering drugs to their inferiors who are exposed to the rule of full obedience, and (ii) the ethical consequences of enhancement for moral judgment by soldiers in the gray zone between acts of war and war crimes (the difference between the Super soldier and the Killing machine).