Exit Lessons [Archive.org URL]

The debate over exit strategies originated in America’s painful experience during the Vietnam War, which led some foreign-policy thinkers to conclude that an exit plan should be a prerequisite for any military intervention. The debate intensified in the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, as the United States undertook interventions that appeared to be matters of choice more than necessity. In laying down what came to be called the Powell Doctrine, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell included an exit strategy on his list of conditions that should be met before the United States committed forces overseas. But from Somalia to the Balkans and Haiti, none of the subsequent conflicts to which U.S. forces were committed in the 1990s met this condition, much less Powell’s chief principle that interventions must be directly tied to the long-term security of American interests. These costly and inconclusive efforts led critics to put even greater emphasis on questions about how the story was going to end. A year before he was elected president, George W. Bush questioned President Bill Clinton’s 1999 decision to intervene in Kosovo: “Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is.”

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A survey of nearly two dozen major military interventions since the end of World War II reveals that intervening powers were able to craft effective exit strategies in only about a third of the cases—and those happen to be the cases in which the goals of the interventions had already been met. Both the successes and the failures yield a handful of clear lessons about getting out.

Lesson 1: How you leave doesn’t matter very much.

The assumption by both these eminent foreign-policy thinkers that it matters a great deal how you leave is widely shared, and it has a surface logic. An abrupt departure could unleash a civil war or create a power vacuum that adversaries could exploit. Leaving according to a considered plan, on the other hand, could allow an intervening power to withdraw with stability intact and its reputation unscathed.

What might such a smart exit strategy look like? It might be conditional on the creation of credible institutions that could govern the post-intervention state. It could require a slow-and-gradual withdrawal of troops rather than cutting and running, as the United States supposedly did in leaving Somalia in 1993 after the “Blackhawk Down” incident. Perhaps it involves leaving behind a residual force to keep the peace, as the United States did after the Korean War and as a number of states did in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s.

The evidence suggests that these choices do not much matter. Whether or not an exit leads to instability or the erosion of the intervening power’s reputation depends much more on the conditions under which the intervention ended than on the character of the pullout. There is no such thing as a failed intervention capped by a successful exit strategy. This is not to say that exit strategies are completely inconsequential—some clearly are executed better than others. But exit strategies are far less important than the overall success of the interventions that precede them.

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Lesson 2: It’s hard to make a defeat look like a victory.

Leaders sometimes recognize Lesson 1, but they still spend a great deal of time debating exit strategies. Even if a struggling military campaign cannot be transformed into a success, appearances can be manipulated, they hope, so that the nation’s (and the leader’s) honor, reputation, and status can be salvaged.

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Attempts to save face usually take the form of arduously negotiated pre-withdrawal agreements that allow all sides to claim that they have accomplished something positive in the course of the fighting… What is most striking about these agreements is that they are rarely credible, rarely last very long, and are almost always known to be flawed by the signatories.

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If face-saving agreements are rarely credible and the signatories know it, why do they continue to pursue them? History gives two answers. First, the agreements offer short-term domestic rewards to political leaders… Second, an agreement may hold together long enough to allow leaders to disclaim any responsibility for violence that recurs after their troops have left.

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While a prolonged exit may generate an immediate perception that a withdrawal has been carefully planned and conducted on the intervening power’s terms, the long-term attempt to convince others that a defeat is actually a victory is not likely to succeed.

Lesson 3: When in doubt, leave.

The only good reason to prolong a struggling military intervention is if a change in strategy can bring victory. Of course, few politicians believe their strategy is going to fail, but it is very rare for leaders who lack the ability to be honest with themselves to succeed.

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There are reasonable things an intervening power can and should do when it is leaving to reduce the chances of a catastrophic outcome. It can press other powers in the region to refrain from meddling in the power vacuum created by its departure, and it can appeal to the United Nations and other institutions to step in to protect vulnerable minorities and preserve the peace. But the fact is that such institutions are rarely eager to clean up the mess left by an unsuccessful intervention, and the record when they try to do so is not encouraging.

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Leaving sooner rather than later may be the best available option, but that is not to say it will produce a good outcome. The damage caused by a misguided intervention is not easily repaired, and it is usually layered on top of nasty preexisting conditions. The notion that the people of an occupied country will get their political act together once the intervening power threatens to leave is based more on hope than experience. Political instability is often what draws in an outside power in the first place. In many cases, the underlying tensions can only be resolved over the long haul, after considerable bloodshed.

Lesson 4: Beware the domestic politics of exit.

The key motivating forces behind exit strategies are as often domestic political considerations as they are military or diplomatic ones.

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Two kinds of domestic political pressure usually appear, pushing in opposite directions. One kind of pressure comes in the form of demands to cut costs and reduce the human suffering caused by an intervention, reflected in highly visible poll numbers and protest marches. The other is less obvious and thus less discussed by analysts: the imperative to avoid appearing to be the author of failure. Leaders face a strong temptation to “kick the can down the road” and pass on the dilemma of how to get out to a subsequent government.

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Concerns about the domestic political consequences of withdrawal have more often pushed leaders to drag out interventions than to end them quickly.

Lesson 5: Concerns about how to get out shouldn’t preclude intervention, but they must be a consideration.

Public demands for an exit strategy are often simply camouflage for a particular speaker’s opposition to the intervention.

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Requiring a solid advance plan for getting out would amount to precluding almost any intervention. Yet there are cases in which intervention makes sense, including some humanitarian ones. It is usually impossible to fix the terms of exit in advance; they must be shaped by conditions on the ground. In any case, an ex ante exit strategy is not likely to be credible, since battlefield realities will inevitably require strategic adjustments.

That is not to say that political leaders do not need to consider scenarios for withdrawal before taking the plunge. It may be politically impossible to publicly contemplate defeat, but good strategists plan for the possibility. Leaders should be expected to establish the conditions under which they would consider disengagement, and they should have contingency plans in place should a speedy pullout be necessary.