ABSTRACT
Traditional egalitarian military norms strike the optimal balance between practical efficacy and respect for rights among possible norms that could conduce to national security. Noncombatants and combatants are not wronged when they are exposed to the risk of injury in the course of enemy troops’ proportionality calculations or direct attacks, respectively. Both groups have a duty to support just foreign institutions as an expression of their collective responsibility to deliver security to communities. This duty entails ceding claim-rights to foreign combatants against exposure to norm-constrained violence. A failure to cede claim-rights against being exposed to norm-determined levels of risk would mean that foreign militaries would be wrong to serve their citizenry in the same way that domestic militaries serve domestic citizens. The content of military norms is expressed by modeling an optimal compromise between affording domestic combatants the liberty to efficiently protect their citizens while exposing those same citizens to the minimal level of risk from the enemy’s defensive actions. Combatants are not wronged when they are attacked by enemies obeying their deployment orders and subsequently adhering to jus in bello norms because these norms permit combatants to pursue their national security objectives; fight in a way maximizing their chance of survival; and exposing themselves to only necessary risk and suffering.
