In philosophy it is often the case that the end of one story is the start of another. This is true of many attempts to provide a moral justification for the intervention by one state in the affairs of another. Such attempts frequently lead to the conclusion that there is an inherent contradiction in the argument: either states possess the right of self-determination or there is a morally justifiable basis for intervention. In other words, an object, in this case, the state, cannot be both self- and other-determined without self-contradiction. Now a self-contradiction is what it is by virtue of its claim that X both is and is not the case. Not all self-contradictions are moral dilemmas, but a moral dilemma is a kind of contradiction. In a moral dilemma we are being asked to make a choice in a situation of moral conflict in which the moral values involved are mutually exclusive. If contradictions are logically empty, and if dilemmas are varieties of contradictions, then the theoretical and practical seriousness of this conclusion for discussions of the moral basis of intervention should be quite clear. It creates a logical obstacle to the derivation of rules governing the moral basis of intervention, its nature, occasion and degree. If this inference is to be questioned we have no alternative but to challenge the conclusion on which it seems to rest. Quite properly, what appears to be the end of an argument is actually the start of another.