American Thinker: Exit Strategy: Bad Policy or Good Planning

Including an exit strategy as part of planning for national strategy is akin to planning for failure. To plan an exit strategy for stability and reconstruction operations - excluding various inclusive aspects such as banking or plant restarts - implies that the National Command Authority anticipates failure and thus translates to an a priori failure of foreign policy, reflecting upon the military and the nation with its attendant, usually negative, repercussions both domestically and internationally. Conversely, once an operation has been successfully accomplished, or our leadership has decided to end our involvement, then an exit strategy, based entirely on the situation at the time, is appropriate.

Exit strategy as a concept derives from the business world. In entrepreneurship and strategic management an exit strategy is a way to terminate ownership of a company or the operation of some part of the company while attempting to ensure that no one involved suffers loss. In military operations, exit strategy is intended to minimize the loss of lives and materiel.

The concept remained obscure until the Battle of Mogadishu, Somalia when that UN peacekeeping operation cost the lives of U.S. troops without a clear objective. The criticism was revived against U.S. involvement in Yugoslavia, including peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo and the Kosovo war against Serbia. The term has now been adopted by critics of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.[2]

For early Americans warfare was a necessary and accepted means of gaining and maintaining political independence, ensuring national security, and creating conditions for economic growth. Though Americans eschewed standing armies, they were quick to volunteer both for defensive and unabashedly aggressive causes. As a result, American expansion rolled inexorably to continental fulfillment of Manifest Destiny in little more than six decades, a monumental achievement.

That changed in 1941 when the United States, a recognized, if reluctant, world power, had the choice for war made by its enemies. Americans did not know exactly where they were headed or how long it would take, but they had a fierce resolve to crush the tyrants who had the temerity to attack us.

Had the Roosevelt administration chosen to articulate an "exit strategy," when could it have done so? The eight point Anglo-American Atlantic Charter of August 1941 provided a vision for a post-World War II world despite the fact the U.S. had yet to enter the war, but made no mention of exit strategy. After Pearl Harbor, with Britain locked in a desperate struggle for national survival, the U.S. Pacific Fleet in shambles, and an ad-hoc grouping of nations coalescing into a loose alliance, a timetable for victory simply was not a realistic option.

The first opportunity might have been the Declaration of the United Nations on January 1, 1942. This action expanded the anti-Axis alliance to 26 nations with vastly differing capabilities and problems and no common list of war aims. With the military situation grim for the first six months and in flux for at least six more, any speculation regarding when victory would be achieved was problematic, making deliberate planning for exit impossible.

The Casablanca Conference of January 1943 marked a second opportunity when Roosevelt and Churchill agreed on unconditional surrender as a war aim. The Conferences in Cairo and Teheran in late 1943 extended the unconditional surrender pledge to Japan and cemented agreement on opening a second front in Europe. Nothing was said about an exit strategy. The Yalta Conference of February 1945 provided another opportunity, but the war was over within six months and almost sixty-two years later, tens of thousands of U.S. troops remain on former Axis territory.[3]

World War II illustrates three truths relevant to exit strategy: military victory rides on a wide range of factors and is seldom, if ever, certain or on schedule; war generates a never-ending cascade of political, economic and social changes that cannot be predicted; and, while alliances may be necessary, they cloud issues of war aims and operational timelines. Each factor complicates any attempt to establish a vision of a desired end state much less an exit strategy.

In 1950, the suddenness of North Korea's invasion left President Truman little time to devise a strategy for defining victory or planning a victorious withdrawal. Korea was a new type of ideological conflict in which many of the old rules and norms proved irrelevant. Victory remained unpredictable; political, social, and economic impacts continued to unfold in surprising ways; and alliances shaped decisions in ways that did not always meet America's wishes.

When we abandoned the conflict in Vietnam, it signaled the first step towards enshrining the idea of pre-conflict exit strategy. The twin illusions of peace with honor and Vietnamization were seductive. Melding these illusions cast U.S. withdrawal as the fulfillment of a successful national strategy, thus providing an intellectual fig leaf that later led to South Vietnam's defeat in a war that much of America had deemed un-winnable - and it burned the "never again" message deeply into the American psyche.

One early manifestation of that message was the War Powers Act of 1973 when Congress acted to curb the war making authorities of the Commander-in-Chief while levying strict reporting requirements linked to the "estimated scope and duration" of any troop commitment in any hostile environment.

Next was the Weinberger Doctrine, which outlined six tests to govern the decision to commit U.S. forces: forces should not be committed to combat unless American or allied vital interests are threatened; forces should be committed "wholeheartedly, with the clear intention of winning;" troops should be committed only when political and military objectives have been clearly defined and adequate forces provided to accomplish them; the size and composition of the force be in line with the objectives and continually adjusted; a "reasonable assurance" of support of the American people and their elected representatives must precede any deployment; and the commitment of combat troops must be seen as a last resort.[4]

Major General Colin Powell, Secretary Weinberger's Military Assistant, applauded the simple logic of the test for military intervention - if national interests are threatened, go in to win, otherwise stay out. Despite some concern that potential enemies could gain advantage from the public airing of the criteria (e.g. Saddam Hussein, 1990), he found it a practical guide. The 1989 invasion of Panama provided a clear lesson: military intervention must be based on clear and consistent political objectives and employ all force necessary without apology.

After the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Secretary of State Warren Christopher outlined four conditions for commitment of U.S. military forces including a clearly stated goal, a likelihood of success, an exit strategy, and sustained public support. His use of the term "exit strategy" was the first use of a trendy new business term[5] in foreign policy.

President Clinton's Decision Directive (PDD) 25, "U.S. Policy on Reforming Multilateral Peace Operations" demanded clearly defined objectives, a plan for decisive action to achieve them, Congressional and public support, in-progress reviews, and "the operation's anticipated duration is tied to clear objectives and realistic criteria for ending the operation."[6] National Security Advisor Anthony Lake outlined seven circumstances in which armed force might legitimately be used, including defending the U.S., its citizens, and allies; countering aggression; defending our key economic interests; preserving, promoting and defending democracy; preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, international crime and drug trafficking; maintaining U.S. reliability; and humanitarian purposes. These points are immediately followed by three principles outlining how that force should be used: the credible threat of force can be as effective as the actual application; "selective but substantial" use may be more appropriate than "massive" use; and before committing forces, "we should know how and when we're going to get them out." Lake noted that "carefully defined exit strategies for foreign interventions have not been a hallmark of our foreign policy for decades."[7] He would have been more correct had he said that exit strategies have never been a hallmark of our foreign policy - or even a footnote for that matter.

It's not surprising that the idea of a pre-conflict roadmap with a preplanned, tidy extrication of forces is popular. It transforms a messy, unpredictable, and risk filled process into a science where dispassionate calculation leads to clear choices and predictable results. Unfortunately, such choices rarely present themselves. The acceptance of exit strategy makes little geopolitical sense, but it doesn't have to make sense to gain traction. Its appeal to a society with a limited sense of history, whose journalists seemingly race to be the first to brand any intervention a "quagmire," and an expectation of instant gratification in all things, is practically irresistible. This appeal is also bipartisan, at least in the sense that the party out of power seeks to register its concern with the party in power. Serious and highly credible leaders and pundits from both sides of the political divide have urged various administrations to articulate an exit strategy prior to committing military forces in the post-Cold War world.

Americans tend to view current and future wars much the same as we did the ‘good' wars of an earlier era - with a morally supportable beginning and execution, and a clear, victorious end. While Desert Storm provided a brief respite from the reality of post Cold War conflict, we are now poised on the precipice of a change that may well have us wishing for the relative clarity and manageability of Vietnam.

We are where we are: few involved in Iraq would wish to start from here. Americans, for whom foreign policy has always been loaded with moral imperatives and ethical restraints, don't like staring into a bloody moral abyss, particularly one that we largely dug. For much of Washington, if not the country, Iraq is already Vietnam - no possibility of success, thousands of wasted lives, a grim conviction that it would be best to let the ungrateful, pitiless foreigners take their country back.

Due to the vagaries of war, we are usually neither able to dictate nor accurately predict their duration and outcome. This means that planning an exit strategy and then being able to execute it may prove impossible. We won't change the nature of our democracy, and can't change the character of the American people. The question remains, then, can we change the way we conduct our wars, particularly those that require stability and reconstruction operations?

[5] In entrepreneurship and strategic management an exit strategy, exit plan, or strategic withdrawal, is a way to terminate either one's ownership of a company or the operation of some part of the company. Entrepreneurs and investors devise ways of recouping the capital they have invested in a company. The most common strategy is simply to sell their equity position to someone else.

Exit Strategy: Bad Policy or Good Planning

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