 One issue is whether violent revolutions against “lesser tyrannies” can ever be proportional. “Greater tyrannies” engage in large-scale violations of the right of physical security, killings and maimings, or they literally enslave their peoples. “Lesser tyrannies” refrain from those actions, but violate other important rights, including the right to democratic government and various other civil and political rights, such as the right to freedoms of religion, expression, and assembly. Some theorists have argued that it would be unjustified to make war against any party, whether another country’s armed forces or one’s own government, that “merely” engaged in “lesser tyranny”, because lethal force is only proportional when it is used to combat the wrongful use of lethal force (or to avoid being reduced to a slave). David Rodin (2003), for example, contends that it would be wrong for the people of one country to use lethal force to resist and invasion by another country whose leaders were only intent on imposing a “lesser tyranny”. In other words, he denies that the right of self-defense could ever justify violence against an invader that “merely” wished to destroy a nation’s sovereignty. He even goes so far as to say that if an individual invaded one’s home and one had reason to believe that if one resisted the invasion the invader would use lethal force, thus triggering one’s own right to use lethal force in defense of oneself and one’s family, one should hide from the invader in order to avoid this escalation. Jeff McMahan (1994) argues, in contrast, that there is no duty to avoid such an escalation, and that even if it would be disproportionate to initiate lethal force against an invader intent only on “lesser tyranny”, it would not be disproportionate to respond with lethal force to an invader who made a “conditional threat” of lethal force, that is, who asserted that she would use lethal force in response to any form of resistance, including nonviolent resistance (Frowe and Lazar 2017). McMahan also asserts that one need not wait for the realization of the “conditional threat” of the invader to be imminent before using lethal force to counter it if that is the only way to be assured of one’s safety (McMahan 1994). Finlay (2015) agrees with McMahan’s conclusion and explicitly applies it to the case of revolutionary wars, holding that it is justifiable to make revolutionary war against a regime that is merely a “lesser tyranny” if that regime responds with lethal force to nonviolent resistance. The case that McMahan and Finlay develop against Rodin’s austere view can be strengthened by noting that under the existing international order, a norm that allows war-making to prevent the loss of sovereignty, at least in the case of reasonably democratic and rights-respecting countries, makes good sense because the state is the primary locus for the establishment of basic justice and the protection of human rights. 