Abstract
Abstract I have started and restarted this chapter it seems like a million times. The moral equality of combatants (MEC) is a just war principle whose legitimacy I have assumed probably since I began thinking about just war theory many years ago. Now I am not so confident of its plausibility, much less its legitimacy. Nonetheless, after considering the issue from many sides, and considering the very powerful arguments of those theorists who question MEC, I still feel there is something to say in favour of MEC and that the jus in bello/jus ad bellum distinction provides some reason to believe that combatants on any side of a war are moral equals (provided they fight in accordance with the laws of war, a notion that itself requires clarification but is not the focus of this chapter). So I want to discuss a couple of ideas, ways of looking at MEC, that make its legitimacy seem plausible.
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