 The debate between reductivism and exceptionalism is overblown—the concept of “war” is vague, and while typical wars involve properties that are not instantiated in typical conflicts outside of war, we can always come up with far-fetched hypotheticals that don’t involve those properties, which we wouldn’t call “wars”. But this masks a deeper methodological disagreement: when thinking about the morality of war, should we start by thinking about war, or by thinking about the permissible use of force outside of war? Should we model justified killing in war on justified killing outside of war? Or, in focusing on the justification of killing in war, might we then discover that there are some non-canonical cases of permissible killing outside of war? My own view is that thinking about justified killing outside of war has its place, but must be complemented by thinking about war directly.