Abstract:
Motivated in part by the United States’ sprawling temporal and geographic projection of military force in the decades since 9/11, this chapter evaluates whether there is a point in armed conflict at which international law requires a state to stop fighting—or, more precisely, to cease its contributions to the conflict’s perpetuation. Morally, this is an undeniably urgent question. War involves the infliction of death, destruction, and suffering through means and methods that would be straightforwardly impermissible in any other context. At the crux of contemporary international law are intricate debates regarding the precise contours of the exceptional conditions under which it is lawful for a state to initiate war. And yet, despite similar normative stakes, there is vanishingly little jurisprudence on when it ceases to be lawful for a state to contribute to the perpetuation of a war that is ongoing. Drawing on the principles of necessity and proportionality in the jus ad bellum and human rights law, as well as underlying principles relating to the pursuit of peace, this chapter contends that international law includes the basic foundations of an obligation to cease fighting beyond a certain point. The current moment offers an opportunity to elaborate and fortify that regime with a view to shaping both public and intragovernmental discourse and providing a normative framework for political action and decision-making regarding war exit.

Preorder the full book here.