 Ullmann-Margalit pointed out that if the soldiers understood the nature of their predicament they might want to do something to prevent themselves from both fleeing and subsequently being captured. More importantly, she argued that the prisoner’s dilemma that characterizes their predicament arises in innumerable interactions that we find ourselves in every day. At first glance, the obvious solution to these dilemmas might seem to be for the soldiers to simply pledge to remain at their posts. The problem, however, is that in scenarios like this promises are unlikely to be credible, and, even when they are, they are prone to being exploited. Instead, what the soldiers need is a way of literally or figuratively chaining themselves to their mortars. Drawing on this observation, Ullmann-Margalit’s suggestion was that it is moral norms that do this work. More specifically, it’s not the promises to remain at their posts that solves the soldiers’ predicament, so much as their commitment to keeping their promises and to sanctioning those who don’t.