 One way that Buddhist ethical theory might be used, in certain extreme cases, to justify war relies on Asaṅga’s account of justifiable killing, discussed in section 4 above. For example, if the officials of a militarily powerful state, monitoring the situation in a small developing country, see that a genocide has begun to take place there, they might reflect that those who are now committing genocide are not only causing terrible harm to their victims, but also accumulating severe negative karma for themselves. These officials might decide to intervene to stop the genocide, motivated by compassion for everyone involved, including the killers. If they are sincerely motivated in this way, Mahāyāna Buddhists might see their actions as acceptable, even if they involved using military force and killing many people, because less suffering would result and the overall consequences would therefore be much better.