I advocate this stance for every alliance but NPO. Due to their peace mode mentality this war, they have managed to preserve a significant powerbase. If those nations were to come out for a few weeks then I would be all for light terms.
You must also remember you were not the only one they were at war with. So we come to the case of overlapping damages and such that makes actual damage counts impossible to assess unless you have pre/postwar info on every nation in the involved alliances.
PoW's whose alliances surrendered are not held to the terms is my guess. I am unsure if that is the case, but it would make sense as long as the PoW's do not reenter the war on the hegemony side.
Someone rerolls new nation, gets 3 mil aid, sends out 9 mil, goes into 6 mil deficit, deletes nation, rerolls, etc. Makes 9 million out of 3 with no cost.