Abstract

This chapter examines the suggestion that national-defence is a right held by states and is principally grounded in the end of defending the common life of the community, rather than the lives of individual citizens. It argues that grounding national self-defence in an account of the value of common life is as problematic as the attempt to ground it in the end of protecting individual persons. National-defence cannot be reduced to a collective application of personal rights of self-defence, nor explained as a state-held right analogous to personal self-defence.