The best way to ensure a speedy exit from a war is to have never intervened in the first place. The second-best option is to have an exit strategy. If you have decided to roll the dice in the most complex, destructive, and uncertain activity humans can engage in, one would think having a plan to successfully end that conflict would be more than an afterthought. The past 70 years, in particular, have provided tragically few examples — Vietnam, Afghanistan, and now Syria — of exit strategies actually being contemplated before the war begins.
A recent article for War on the Rocks by David Kampf argues that not only is an exit strategy not necessary until the withdrawal is looming, but that planning for an exit before this point is actually problematic. The article notes that preparing to exit a conflict is a distraction from what's really important — the planning and execution of the initiating conflict itself. A successful intervention, then, is judged based on achieving initial objectives, not about actually concluding said intervention or even maintaining those objectives years later. Kampf isn't the first to advance this argument — Gideon Rose argued something similar in 1998. Both think exit strategies are distractions from the early combat strategy of the intervention.
Read Full Article »
