Retiring U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates didn’t even try to hide his frustration. In his Brussels farewell address this week, Gates used words such as “dim, if not dismal” to describe the future of NATO, an organization that “despite [having] more than 2-million troops in uniform, not counting the U.S. military,” has trouble sustaining “a deployment of 25,000 to 45,000 troops.”

Talk about a paper tiger. Judging by NATO’s performance in Libya, unable to dethrone a tyrant who was virtually defeated by protesters in pickup trucks before military operations started, we’re lucky that NATO was never called upon to defend its North Atlantic partners against anything worse than Muammar Gaddafi and, before him, Slobodan Milosevic. But this raises a question.

NATO’s difficulty in fielding forces “not just in boots on the ground,” as Gates put it, “but in crucial support assets,” was well known from America’s experience in Afghanistan. Why, then, did the Obama White House hand NATO the task of finishing off Gaddafi?

Did the President think it was like shooting fish in a barrel? Unlikely. Barack “Nobel Peace Prize” Obama isn’t now, and has never been, the type to give away an easy credit.

Or was it some concern with political fallout? Ah. Getting warmer.

In our days of asymmetric warfare, many people are noticing a phenomenon, even if they aren’t sure what causes it. Some ascribe it to technology. “Look at the success of protesters all around the world,” a correspondent writes in today’s mailbag. “People armed with sticks and stones are changing regimes that have tanks, warplanes, even nuclear power. Is it possible that in the battle between low-tech and high-tech, low-tech is winning?”

Well, no. I don’t think it’s a battle between low-tech and high-tech, though sometimes it may look that way. I think it’s a battle between low tolerance for casualties and high tolerance.

Acceptance of casualties as the price to pay for some desired military or political objective probably reached its high-water mark during the Second World War, just before the atomic bombs were released over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Fat Boy” and “Little Boy,” as the two bombs were nicknamed, appear to have turned the trend. Incinerating a hundred thousand people (or more) will do that sometimes.

In the last 50 years, as weapons of mass destruction were being developed and deployed, the body politic worldwide seems to have had what I’m tempted to describe as an immunological reaction to their proliferation. Humankind started producing antibodies. As our capacity to inflict massive casualties grew, public acceptance of casualties as a concept diminished.

During the trench warfare of the Western Front between 1914 and 1918, thousands would perish on both sides in battles essentially producing stalemates. This type of generalship resulted in a medal at the time. It would likely result in a court martial today. Nations as well as international communities have become less tolerant of casualty figures in war as well as in civil conflict. Literary people are no longer as prone to speak with approval of “necessary murder” as W. H. Auden was in 1937. Today even Mao Ze Dong might hesitate before sacrificing millions of lives to such social experiments as “Great Leap Forward” or “Cultural Revolution.”

Has it become a better world? I wouldn’t go so far, but the fashions of evil have changed. Players on the “strong” side of asymmetric conflicts (soldiers, police) cannot support public perception of casualties nearly as easily as players on the “weak” side (rioters, protesters, terrorists). In this ambiance, it’s possible to lose by winning, if in the course of victory the casualty count exceeds whatever number the zeitgeist finds justifiable.

As a result, paper tigers have proliferated. Power that cannot be used is non-existent. In fact, it’s a liability. It does the “strong” side no good. Given the spirit of the times, firepower, let alone nuclear power, is useless against unarmed protesters, regardless of whether they’re on the side of the angels or the devil — but this isn’t to say that power is useless. It’s just that useful power may take novel and different forms.

One useful form is the development of effective and incapacitating but non-lethal weaponry. This is becoming indispensable for the “strong” side in asymmetric warfare. It doesn’t have to be “low-tech” by any means, only non-lethal. In the absence of such weaponry, a force opposing rioters, whether they’re good guys or bad guys, can only massacre — or fold. Good guys don’t massacre, so the automatic advantage goes to the bad guys.

Enter the Hatzatzit. It’s a machine developed by the Israeli Defense Forces. Apparently it throws stones in a way that’s non-lethal and effective. When mobs storm the borders, as they did from Syria the other day, it gives border guards a choice other than killing the intruders or yielding to them.

I think it was Bertrand Russell who said that after a nuclear war we’ll fight the next one with sticks and stones. It looks as though we’re getting ready for it.