 Madam Under Secretary, officers, professors, ladies and gentlemen, a great pleasure for me to be here. Great pleasure to be with my friends, Martin, Tim and several others, George, others who teach here also. There's an old saying that goes, show me your friends and I will tell you who you are. And that feels good in this company. I've heard from a friend who works in the post office that they say, show me your address and I will tell you where you live. So that's the simpler one. Anyway, I have been called here as a philosopher to speak about philosophy for the next approximately 55 minutes. We'll see how that goes. One thing that Martin and I often come up against when we referee articles for the Journal of Military Ethics, which I'll now do the commercial for. Here it is, read it and now it's said. It is the world's foremost peer review journal for professional military ethics. It is also incidentally the world's only peer review journal for professional military ethics. But still, even with competition or more competition, we would have been up there. One thing that we come across sometimes is an article that will obviously be very intelligent. Written by someone who masters her or his field absolutely perfectly, which makes your mind boggle. But does it really get anywhere or does it just discuss something internally between two philosophers? So there is one Kantian discussing with another Kantian what the categorically imperative actually means. There is nothing wrong about that. It brings philosophy forward and maybe some points down the line, brings the whole subject of ethics and maybe even professional military ethics forward. But it's not really about the world that we inhabit. So we have as our rule of thumb that what we publish should speak to you, should speak to highly intelligent practitioners of the military matters. Now, what happens then with some of these purely internal philosophers debates is, of course, that they seem to others to be really about nothing. So I tried to find some good philosopher's jokes to illustrate what I'm saying. There is one great one about two people meeting and the one says to the other, didn't I meet you in wonderful Newport? And the other says, no, I've never been to Newport. And the first says, well, I haven't either, must be two others. It doesn't really have any sort of reference. You can speak, what were they actually talking about? What was this? I'll come back to some others later. Now, I am going to speak about a particular debate that some of you will probably say comes across as such a purely philosopher's debate. It is the debate about the moral equality of combatants. It is one that has been set in motion by several thinkers over a long time, but it has not least been ignited during the last 10 to 15 years by philosophers Jeff McMahon and David Rodin, among others. So as almost to create two different debates. I was at a conference in Stockholm in May where Jeff McMahon and others put forward parts of what they call the revisionist just war theory. Lots of people there, and I asked them about such things as a journal of military ethics and asked if many of them were going to the ISMI conference next week, that is the International Society of Military Ethics, which is the foremost body of professional military ethics. Well, most of the philosophers who were there had never heard of ISMI. They knew nothing about that conference and generally did not really know what that other debate was about, what we would call professional military ethics. So you end up with these interesting conversations where you wonder, do they really know what they're talking about? In order to keep you awake, I'll take one more jocular example. There is a Norwegian who is going to a church conference in the US. He's bringing his wife and he's a little bit worried because she's a little bit incontinent, it's outside of town. So he's asking, how are things with toilet facilities? And he remembers that in the US, they normally don't say toilets. So he wonders, what should I use? WC, water closet. So he asks, how are things with WC? The guy who gets the letter doesn't quite understand what he's after, but then he understands, ah, it's our woodchapel. And the letter back has become a classic where he says, yes, we have this, which he of course reads as toilet. Most families go there during the weekend. They bring food and eat together and I love the last sentence of the letter which says, the acoustics are fantastic, every little sound can be heard. And you realize that it's a totally nonsensical debate because the one doesn't really know what the other is talking about. So what I'm trying to challenge us now, and I will take you on a little philosophical tour of this question, is whether this debate is among them, whether they are talking about something else, those who belong to what we now often call revisionist just war theory, or whether they actually challenge us in some important ways. Those of us who to a larger extent, we define ourselves as professional military ethicists, and who would at least aspire to address those questions that the undersecretary asked us to do. Those things that actually matter in how we meet people in the world. Last year, I was asked by Eric Patterson and James Turner Johnson to provide an overview of this debate for a book that is coming out on Ashgate right after Christmas. I think there are some other authors in this hall. And I was asked to address exactly this question. And both of these are quite skeptical. They said, this is a kind of weird debate, but please write 20 pages because we need to cover it. And I realized as I did so, that yes, there are some challenges here that are well worth thinking about. One final thing before I'll start properly. One reason why I think part of this philosophers' debate that has ended up in the revisionist just war theory comes across to many practitioners as a little bit strange, a little bit out of this world, is that it's people by professors, philosophers, who use a lot of imaginary examples. Have you heard about the trolley example? It's one of the favorites of philosophy. And a huge debate has come up around it called trolliology. This is the example which originally I guess comes from Philippa Foote being developed by James, by, by Judith Jarvis Thompson, about a trolley that is on the run, no brakes and it will hit five people down the road if you don't stop it. And the question is, can you push someone out in front of the trolley in order to stop it from killing those five people? You are intentionally pushing someone, but on the other hand, you are saving five people, could you do that? And many people have a certain worry, would I actually do it? So there are lots of variants on it. For instance, what if you could shift the tracks so that it just continues to another track? You don't have to push anyone, but on that track, there is only one person. And on the other, that's fine. Get the drift. And of course, many of us would ask, why are you coming up with that example? Because we have lots of examples that are much better from real life, where you don't have to discuss trolleys. And the danger, of course, is that in the end, you build up a lot of intuitions about what to do about runaway trolleys, but you rarely actually encounter them. I heard one some weeks ago, which was called the sledgehammer example. It was so weird, I still don't understand it. But there's a question of a child drowning in a pond. And you're wondering, I cannot save it, but there's a very strong guy next to me who can save it. But he will, in order to save it, use a sledgehammer to get it up. So the child will be hurt. Do you have responsibility for the child's scars? It's true. I heard it debated by several philosophers. I still don't understand quite the significance. Now, I'm not out to make fun of anyone here. But I think that's part of the suspicion. And it's one that we should be aware of in philosophy. And I'm sure a lot of other subjects as well, whether we use a sort of language, terminology, sort of examples that actually speak to what we're talking about, I think that is important. Now, I'll just start by saying that it is indeed a heated debate we are confronted with here. I'll present it to you in a second. To some, it will be well known. To others, it will be rather new, at least the way I'm getting at it. It is really about what we can call the groundwork or the loss of our conflict or as many lawyers say today, international humanitarian law. And the three-letter abbreviation I have here, MEC, stands for the moral equality of combatants. And I'll put it this way. One of the most celebrated features of the loss of our conflict, also known as international humanitarian law, is formal protection for prisoners of war. This provision rests on the presupposition that is the theme of my talk, namely the moral equality of combatants. Namely, a prisoner of war is not a convicted criminal. The prisoner of war is not being punished for wrongdoing. Rather, the prisoner of war has merely been removed from the battlefield and thereby stopped from attacking or endangering those who have taken him or her prisoner. This rule, and here comes a point, applies equally to both sides. And it is part of a larger convention that holds all soldiers to the same standards and gives them the same basic rights, including immunity for killing enemy soldiers when militarily necessary and in conformity with the loss of our conflict. All of you know this well. Many in this room have taught this exact teaching. The underlying assumption is that there is no moral or legal wrongdoing implied in being a soldier or officer per se. Members of fighting forces are prima facie, that is on the face of it, morally equal and until or unless they have committed war crimes or other crimes equally innocent before the law. This way of thinking has been challenged by what I just called revisionist just war theory. This moral equality of combatants builds on a distinction between the use oddbellum, the right to use force, and the use in bellow, the discussion about how we do it, rightly. The question of whether and when it is right to use armed force, use oddbellum, is according to this distinction to be decided on and answered by the political authorities of the realm, well represented here. The question of how to fight on the other hand, use in bellow, remains mainly the responsibility of the fighting forces. According to this distinction, the latter are not tasked with deciding on or judging the morality of any particular war. They are someone like a prison guard or officer of a court, a comparison often used. They serve an institution whose rules they obey. Prison guards or court officers, even if personally convinced that an accused or a prisoner is innocent, cannot themselves take action against the rules of the court and the legal system. Neither, of course, does anyone hold them personally accountable for incarcerating an innocent person. So there it is. This has actually sometimes been called the classical doctrine. That is probably inaccurate, because if you look back to St. Thomas Aquinas, he did not fully hold this teaching of moral equality of combatants, but I'll touch on this later. It's at least a teaching that has become widespread, as I said, it's in many ways the groundwork of much of modern law of armed conflict and it's famously held and argued for by Michael Walcher. Then comes the other side, because this is an idea that seems to have some counter-intuitive implications. If the difference between fighting for a just rather than an unjust cause has real significance and insisting on that significance is, after all, a central part of just war reasoning, then which side one fights for clearly has moral significance, doesn't it? It seems, morally speaking, awkward to argue that the acts of both sides simultaneously, including the actions of their soldiers, are to be counted as morally equal. But isn't that just what we said? Building on this line of thought, philosopher Jeff McMahon, as I've already said, interestingly, at Rutgers University, the same place where leading just-warrior historian James Turner Johnson is, and I thought they must be discussing with each other all the time, but they rarely even meet. Another example of these being two quite distinct debates. Anyway, Jeff McMahon, partly or wholly supported by a number of other writers, including Oxford philosopher David Rodin, has argued that the morally-qualitative combatant's thesis is unsustainable. It stands as a serious hindrance to a morally acceptable teaching about the ethics of war. A heated exchange of views has followed in the wake of McMahon's challenge, and this is no surprise, since we seem to be faced with a real quandary. It makes this little practical sense to ascribe blame to individual soldiers for the cause of the war in which they fight, as it makes theoretical sense to hold the fighters on the two sides to be fully morally equal. So there we are. What should we call this other view then? Well, we often call it asymmetry. And asymmetry theorists such as McMahon seem to resist the most immediately obvious practical consequences that could be drawn from their thesis, namely that some combatants should not be protected by the laws of war and conflict, right? If they are combatants for an unjust side, they have no right to do what they do. So therefore, if you take this argument seriously from McMahon, they are not protected by the laws of war and conflict. However, very few asymmetry theorists, including McMahon, reach that conclusion. But they say that there rests more of an obligation on each of us to ask questions about the justice of the conflict we are going into. And if we do not, but could have, then we have a larger responsibility for what it is we're doing. I will come back to that issue as well a little bit later. Hopefully my discussion will show that what the moral equality of combatant thesis most deeply implies is that there are indeed implausible and important philosophical reasons to question it also while it is important as a groundwork for international humanitarian law. I'll just say one more thing before I'm still on my introduction, I have a very long introduction, but I have a very short lecture, so don't worry. We'll get through, I do it that way. So Stu and you can wake up. Just say one more thing. From a moral point of view, the moral equality of combatants thesis, the one from Walzer, the one I just said underpin the laws of war and conflict, can be said to represent a double-edged sword, ethically speaking. On the one hand, as I've already said several times, it constitutes an important part of the ethical groundwork of, for instance, the rules of the Geneva Conventions and more generally the laws of war and conflict, stressing not least the protections that are due to non-combatants and to prisoners of war and the accompanying duties incumbent on combatants. On the other hand, it seems to justify actions in pursuit of manifestly unjust goals, since any soldier fighting for any cause as long as he or she obeys the orders of a sovereign authority and does not commit manifest war crimes, has full immunity and the full right to kill soldiers on the just side of the conflict. So there you have it. That's the quadrant. So let me try to summarize this. The moral equality of combatants view is built on firstly the idea that soldiers cannot be expected to investigate or know about the use ad bellum. That is not their job. The use ad bellum and use in bello are indeed distinct. The soldier has a duty to fight for what the state deems worth fighting for. The other question that is the one that triggers McMahon is, but who can rightly be killed? The model that Michael Walzer uses in his book, Just an Unjust Wars, is that when you are a soldier, you sometimes somehow lose your immunity. I mean, normally no one has the right to shoot at you. Suddenly, others have a right to shoot at you. How did that happen? Well, according to Walzer, it's because you are part of a military system and you don the uniform and you become a danger to the other side. And so you lose that. But what McMahon asks is, well, but if you fight for the just side, you are defending your own country, you have done nothing to lose your right to live. How can it be that it can be rightful to actually kill you? That is the challenge and that is what we call the asymmetry thesis. Okay, I'll give you an overview of the main arguments in the debate. Now the lecture actually starts. So I prepared it well, have a time. First, as I've already touched on, one argument is called the ignorance and duress argument. It's an off-sided argument in favor of moral equality of combatants, formulated by among others, philosopher Daniel Zupan. It's a claim that ignorance exculpates the individual soldier and that puts all soldiers regardless of sight or cause on an equal footing. That is that we cannot expect that a soldier should know or can know whether what he or she is fighting for is just. The ignorance argument emphasizes the cognitive aspect of the relationship between the use oddbellum and the use in bellow. The ignorance argument is predicated on the idea that soldiers cannot in all fairness be expected to have the ability to judge the justice of the words they fight, even if we morally speaking had wanted them to do so. Most soldiers are subject to a certain upbringing and political culture, possibly including propaganda, brainwashing, which are included and inculcated in them that they are to obey their superiors and protect their state. How are they reasonably to be expected that they should not fight any particular war? Furthermore, a soldier will often pay a heavy price for disobedience. Further strengthening the intuition of the moral equality of combatants that soldiers on either side simply cannot be expected not to fight. A further argument pertaining to states where propaganda and brainwashing are not prevalent and now we're in our democratic societies and where citizen will not suffer that severely from protesting against military service holds that the justice of wars is notoriously difficult to judge. It is an extremely hard question. And when we keep discussing these things, often many years after a conflict and we're still not clear, was it just or was it not? Should we then expect that individual soldiers and officers should make up their mind about this and draw conclusions from that? Against these claims, Jeff McMahon and others, including Judith Lichtenberg, have answered that asymmetry, that is the other view, the view that unjust soldiers do not have the same rights as soldiers fighting for just cause. That view does not imply that all unjust soldiers are individually liable or culpable for participation in an unjust war. In most cases, they say individual soldiers can indeed be exculpated due to ignorance or lack of actual choice and should not be punished for their mere participation in war. The primary point of McMahon's asymmetry doctrine is not to exact legal punishment of individual soldiers. Rather, the doctrine emphasizes that the use of armed force by unjust and just parties who arm conflict is not to be placed on an equal moral footing. From this follows, most especially, that what we can broadly call the chain of command on the manifestly unjust side of a war has a responsibility and culpability for that side's acts of war, which is basically different from, indeed, asymmetrical to the responsibility of those on the presumably just side. Exactly what conclusions to draw from that is unclear. When we prod these theorists, they have different views on this. But even those things that clearly fall within what we would call the loss of armed conflict, standard use in Bello should be differently judged if it is done by someone who really has no right to do so because they are on the unjust side of a war. Much more could be said about that. But I'll go to the second argument often put forward in favor of the moral equality of combatants thesis. This argument takes as it's pointed departure the fact that the military establishment is a collective. Thus, war must rightly be understood as a relation between or among collectives that rather than as a set of relations among individuals. Legal scholar called Chris Kutso has written excellently on this, has held this fact to be decisive. It is a soldier's nation, not the soldier as an individual who is at war. There's an echo here of the exculpation aspect of the ignorance argument, but the emphasis rests to a larger extent on the collective quality of the military enterprise. You somehow are not yourself in a real way. You are part of something that is bigger, a collective quality of the military enterprise. The collective is an ordered community with internal norms of authority and obedience in which individuals legitimately take part. This legitimacy flows from the fact that a nation has a right to organize such collectives, and while they may be condemned for their actions as a collective, those who take part in such collectives as individuals merely perform the political tasks that all citizens can legitimately perform and even be expected to perform. So this is in other words, a fully legitimate job. Like being a police officer or a shopkeeper. This is the sort of thing that we expect societies to have. And then you cannot be held guilty for doing it if you are part of that collective. Rousseau famously said in the social contract much the same. He said, war is not a relationship between one man and another in which individuals are enemies only by accident, not as men, nor even as citizens, but as soldiers, not as members of the fallen land, but as its defenders. Finally, any state can only have other states and not men as enemies, in as much as it is impossible to fix a true relation between things of different natures, says Rousseau. So that is the nature of war. It is between groups or between states. Dan Zupin has developed this argument for the moral equality of combatants further by defending the right of the state to organize such collectives and to uphold rules of obedience and authority within them. A citizen soldier, as Zupin denotes the soldier who does take part in the collective enterprise, is morally equal to any other individual who takes part in another state's prima facie legitimate political collective. As long as one does not clearly know, or at least clearly should know, that one state or its institutions are wholly illegitimate, both the soldier and the collective, meaning the military force fight with impunity as long as they respect the laws of war. It's part of a social contract. Jeff McMahon, as you can expect, has taken issue with this argument for the moral equality of combatants. He holds the collectivist defense, essentially that the collectivist defense essentially makes it permissible for individuals to do as part of a collective what no one would otherwise be admitted or allowed to do. So that what is obviously morally wrong suddenly becomes right, says McMahon. Does that make any sense? He says this presupposes a form of moral alchemy to which it is difficult to give credence. McMahon asks us to see the implausibility of this view by reflecting on the problem from the point of view of the soldier on the just side of a war. And here in many ways comes the crux because McMahon's argument is very much centered around individual rights. And the basic individual right is the right not to be killed. And a soldier on the just side of an armed conflict has done nothing to lose that right. So how can such a soldier's life be any more rightly taken by a well-ordered collective than by an individual? Each soldier fights for a justified side and cause in an armed conflict, say in self-defense against an aggressive invasion, has done nothing as an individual or as part of a collective to deserve being killed. Hence the fact that the soldier on the unjust side of the conflict acts on behalf of a collective does nothing to lessen the wrongfulness of his or her lethal action. There may, as I've already said, exist exculpating conditions for the individual soldier, but the collective still acts wrongly and the individual combatant is part of that collective. He or she, to the extent there is a reasonable opportunity to do so, and we would be dealing here in practice with the literate informed soldier of the 21st century, should ask serious moral questions about the legitimacy of fighting. The soldier cannot simply hide behind the facade of the collective. So that's argument number two. As a soldier, you are acting on behalf of a collective and you are not responsible except for when you, as an individual, transgress the loss of armed conflict. Number three and the last one is the following. And this is one that Michael Walzer famously spends quite a lot of time on. He stresses that war is and should be a rule-governed activity. The rules of war are of immense importance. They shield non-combatants from harm. They protect the rights of prisoners of war. They help decide which weapons can rightfully be used and generally restrained armed forces from unbridled brutality. From the morally quality point of view, from Walzer's point of view, from the loss of armed conflict point of view, this concern comes up when faced with the Yosemite doctrine. Because once we hint that the rules of war are not absolute, you can start chipping away at them. There isn't this equality that they said there was. Then we also stand in danger, say they, a weakening the already fragile framework that helps us avoid the worst excesses of war. I'll quote shortly Adam Roberts, who many of you will know, a leading legal scholar. And I understand when I hear him speak about this issue that he is not just worried about the slight difference of interpretation from some other philosophers, but he believes that this is a very, very dangerous doctrine. It actually stands in danger of unraveling much of the groundwork of the loss of armed conflict. The gist of this argument is closely related to the theme of this conference, and thanks again to Martin for convening it, namely the professional codes of conduct. Being a member of the military, regardless of where and in what service, generally implies a set of rules and standards that all should identify with. This is what it means to be a professional. And for the proponents of the moral equality of combatants, this is a crucial argument for moral equality between combatants on different sides. Furthermore, and I guess many of you will already have this in the back of your mind when you hear my arguments, when seen from a bystander point of view, it can be highly advantageous not to have to judge who is right and who is wrong. Civilian protection is a brilliant example. If what we are after is protecting the civilians in an area, if you should go in there and say, well, some are more culpable than others and don't deserve the same sort of protection, many would say that that makes little sense and is even quite dangerous. Most famously, if you represent the Red Cross and strive to ensure that the rules of war are respective, you are better off applying the rules to both sides impartially, period. Anything else just messes up the whole picture. Greater respect will then also be gained for such rules when both sides know that the rules are being administered impartially. Just mentioned to you here, if you want an example to use of this line of thought, famously used by Walzer, it is General Irwin Rommel's disagreement with and refusal to obey the command of orders of October 1942 that allowed soldiers and officers to kill prisoners of war. As many of you will know, Rommel did not obey that order, indeed tore it up and said that no decent soldier would do this and says, Walzer, even though he was on the wrong side of a war, clearly, we laud him for that. This point also leads us to a deep-seated worry among moral equality defenders, namely that the asymmetry argument by focusing on the justice or injustice of the warfare that is being waged will also have to conclude that some non-combatants on the unjust side should in some cases lose their immunity. The reasoning would be that many technically considered to be non-combatants by the current laws of armed conflict, for instance, propagandists for an unjust war, are as much to blame for the fighting and thus as instrumental in and important to the de facto criminal activity of unjust war as lawful combatants are. The logical conclusion of the asymmetry doctrine will be according to this argument that in the same way as just combatants are not liable to be attacked, morally speaking, unjust non-combatants are thus liable being partakers in a criminal enterprise. Now, if you draw that conclusion in practice, but it's worth noting. I'll quote Adam Roberts again. He says, at a time when use in bellow is under considerable pressure, not least from both sides in the war on terror, a philosophical, cum-legal approach that provides some basis for relativizing the application of the law on account of the alleged justice of the cause could only too easily be misused. For example, to minimize still further the already attenuated body of rules applying to detainees. Even if it was in no way the intention of those exploring and questioning the moral equality of combatants, this could be the unintended and unwelcome consequence. End of quote. I think that arguably sums up a key apprehension about the asymmetry doctrine from the point of view of those defending the moral equality thesis. The reply from Jeff McMahon and others consists in a distinction between the moral and legal parts of the argument. As McMahon puts it in a discussion of prisoners of war, just combatants have rights as prisoners that unjust combatants lack. When their existence as prisoners imperils the lives of their captors, unjust combatants are protected against being killed only by agreement or convention. But just combatants retain in war the same right not to be killed that they possessed outside the context of war. End of quote. In other words, morality goes further. Morality goes deeper than the law and it is more morally discriminating. Well, that is the way it probably should be and has to be according to his argument. But that doesn't mean that the moral pointed without practical force or meaning. According to McMahon, it makes a strong statement about injustice and about the individual soldiers and officers moral responsibility in the face of manifest injustice. So let me go to the conclusion. According to someone like Adam Roberts, also James Turner Johnson holds the same view. Much of the viability of the laws of armed conflict is at stake. I can put it in the following way. The contemporary debate about moral equality of combatants arguably pits an individualistic understanding of moral responsibility as represented by someone like McMahon. Against a more collectivist understanding of the military enterprise as represented and formulated by Michael Walzer. Both strands in the debate, however, seem to agree that retaining an overall symmetry in legal rights and liabilities makes sense since it would minimize the appeal to contested judgment on the battlefield and since the alternative would introduce a number of problems that are notoriously hard to adjudicate. First of all, who is just and who is unjust. Who can be said to understand that he or she is acting manifestly unjustly and who is plausibly ignorant. Who should decide on the overall justice of a war? And how would a legal framework look which took the moral inequality of combatants into considerations? Proponents of the asymmetry doctrine harbor the hope that a move away from moral equality of combatants and, nonetheless, even if only on a moral level, would contribute to placing more responsibility on combatants, making them more willing, and I think we here come close to what they're after, more willing to refuse engagement in unjust military enterprises before they become fully immersed in them. I think that lies behind much of it. I hope that as enlightenment grips the world, if that ever happens, the Kantian dream of actually individual citizens taking a stand and thereby saying, no, I don't want to fight in this war, will become much more widespread and that the basis of that is exactly this questioning, whether it is right to be a soldier if you know you are so on what you could call the unjust side. Now, I could have said much more but I think the important thing is, does this debate matter? Well, to a certain extent it matters because it takes up the question of the role of ethics and morality. Both parties unite in their insistence that morality matters and that is no trivial agreement, I would say. There is no general permission for combatants whether just or unjust under any circumstances or according to either of the two sets of arguments to pursue what they see as their legitimate goal by any means. Human beings are beings with dignity and rights and they should not be killed unless strictly necessary and unless moral arguments coalesce to make it permissible. It seems to both parties in the debate that the loss of armed conflict as we have them today to a large extent serve the purpose of safeguarding the moral baseline. The suspicion of the asymmetry theorists is that the laws and what Walter calls a war convention nonetheless rests on shaky ground. It reminds me of an old cartoon which I love which it's from the New Yorker. It shows two men standing in front of a straight tower in Pisa. Has anyone seen the Leaning Tower? It's really leaning. I saw it this summer, I hadn't seen it before. It's much more leaning than I thought. Well, this is a straight tower. Two men are standing in front of it. It's the 13th century. The one is obviously the master builder and he whispers to the other, I have cheated with the foundation but no one will notice. I think that sums up McMahon's worry. That somehow there is an inconsistency in the foundation because we don't fully take seriously that the laws of armed conflict actually allow is for unjust actions to happen with impunity. Well, this is what the debate is about, the moral foundation of the rights and liabilities of combatants, whether it is solid or not. And at least I think that it is one of those philosophers debates that does not just boggle the mind, that does not just bring up some weird sort of argument that in some extreme circumstance could be valid. And I think the whole debate and the questions that Jeff McMahon and others have asked of us who belong to what we call more traditional professional military ethics are worth listening to at least they make us charge our batteries, think more thoroughly through, help us fill the tank. And I'll finish there with a great story I heard which to me is an argument for why we sometimes need philosophers. The guy who's out driving, his car stops, doesn't really understand mechanics. So we call some mechanic who comes and looks at the car and says, but your tank is empty. And he asks, oh, have I been driving like that for a long time? And that's what I sometimes wonder whether we sometimes need to fill up the tank a little bit more, that we go on, take things for granted without really thinking through the moral foundations. Thank you very much. Mostly because I think it's practically a bit dangerous in its implications. If one grants that there still will be states that fight wars on a fairly regular basis. On the other hand, I take your point. You know, everyone in this room, he saw the Americans are volunteers. So when they volunteered, they gave up a good chunk of their moral autonomy by doing so, in particular, because there is no selection of selective conscientious objection in our tradition. So I think if you pushed the McMahon argument all the way, you would ask questions about the moral basis of voluntary military service and into a system that doesn't allow selective objection, wouldn't you? Yes, I think that, well, on one hand, it could be seen as an argument for an all volunteer force because that would actually make it possible for people to think through rather than what you would have if you had the draft where no one would have that opportunity. But on the other hand, you are quite right. And there is probably no surprise in the fact that most of the proponents of the asymmetry thesis are also strong proponents of selective conscientious objection. I think that there should be more room for individual soldiers and officers taking stands even in the middle of a conflict, which, of course, to most military ears sounds preposterous because it destroys the whole fabric of the contract, the military contract, the way in which a military works. If you want to read anything good about that, we have several excellent articles in the Journal of Military Ethics. Okay, questions from the floor, please.