The War Trap: Dilemmas of jus terminatio

Important moral dilemmas arise in the context of what I have called jus terminatio and Darrel Moellendorf has called jus ex bello—the norms governing the termination of war. I discuss three dilemmas, showing how they also illuminate proportionality and jus ad bellum: (1) morally accounting for new costs that arise during the course of a war; (2) two variants of the “sunk-cost dilemma” in which an agent is permitted to contribute to a project that is all things considered morally unjust, when that project is morally justified on a forward-looking basis; and (3) the problem of moral hazard in peace negotiations.