ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates a contentious issue amongst just war theorists: the principle of the morality equality of combatants. It outlines the Walzer's two models of combat, upon which combatants either fight freely and consent to be killed or fight through coercion and are permitted to try to kill each other and also it looked at McMahan's critique of this picture at his claim that we cannot divorce the morality of fighting a war from the morality of the war itself. The chapter explains two arguments that McMahan offers a rebuttal of the claim that combatants are not morally responsible for unjust wars: the argument from institutional stability and the argument from ignorance and also explored Steinhoff's critique of McMahan's claim that unjust combatants have no legitimate targets. Similarly, McMahan claims that given the very high stakes of war, a combatant cannot claim a reasonable belief that their war is just unless they have undertaken a serious investigation of the evidence.
