Does the morality of peace apply to war? In this paper, I defend Walzer's view that soldiers are moral equals on the grounds that there is a morality of war. My claim is that Jeff McMahan's critique relies on a view I call extensionalism and that we should reject this view because it misunderstands the function of excuses. McMahan view commits him to conceiving the conditions of war as providing excuses, rather than conditions that support separate norms. I argue that this is not the case by presenting an analysis of the function of excuses. I pursue by presenting Walzer's reasons, before adding two further reasons, that war is best understood as creating a new normality with its own norms. Finally, I consider an objection to the discontinuity thesis raised by McMahan and provide a reply. I conclude that war is governed by its own morality.
