The Exit Strategy Delusion

Gideon Rose

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 1998

Summary:  Despite disagreements over troops in Bosnia, all sides want an exit strategy. That concept, however, dating back only to the ignominious U.S. withdrawal from Somalia, has nothing to do with military requirements and everything to do with post-Cold War politics. Exit strategies harm a mission's chances of success, and had they been required the United States would not have defended the armistice after the Korean War, kept the peace on the Sinai Peninsula after Camp David, or undertaken NATO. The real question is not when American troops will be out, but why they are going in.

Gideon Rose is Deputy Director of National Security Studies and Olin Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was Director of the Council's Henry A. Kissinger Study Group on Exit Strategies and American Foreign Policy.

If the primary assumptions turn out to be wrong, on the other hand, then senior policymakers need to rethink the mission from the bottom up. In Vietnam, for example, policymakers should have recognized much sooner that aerial attacks and other demonstrations of American resolve would not dissuade the North Vietnamese from trying to take over the South. Instead of spending the mid-1960s gradually escalating the American war effort, officials should have forced themselves to choose between withdrawal or substantial escalation. In Somalia, American policymakers should have recognized long before the firefight in Mogadishu that the humanitarian crisis could not be resolved without addressing the country's political anarchy, which would prove too much for a weak U.N. force to handle. Instead, they were forced out after a bloody confrontation sapped U.S. domestic support. Conversely, if-as in the Persian Gulf War-operations go far more smoothly than expected, policymakers should seriously consider whether it makes sense to strive for more than was originally planned.

STRATEGY, POLITICS, AND BOSNIA

In Bosnia, as in other cases, administration officials have trouble addressing these issues frankly in public. When they are raised, it is usually when the administration is trying to persuade or maneuver Congress into supporting a particular mission. Talks between the executive and legislative branches during the run-up to a major deployment often resemble a game of political chicken rather than a true exchange of ideas. Officials who believe in a military mission that Congress is leery of face wrenching questions, such as how to balance substantive and political concerns, how many compromises to accept, and whether to go forward with a flawed intervention rather than none at all. Still, in the end, the wisest course for an administration is to be as candid as possible-to plan thoroughly and realistically, lay out the true choices involved, and try to build a consensus based on the merits of the case. This is not what the Clinton administration has done on Bosnia.

Despite the heroic efforts of the negotiators at Dayton, the resulting agreement did not clear a path toward a stable end state. Rather than lower its objectives or eschew intervention, the administration decided to plow ahead and embraced a time limit on the Implementation Force (IFOR) deployment as the answer to its problems. This was either naive, disingenuous, or a gamble, and it has not worked.

The administration repeatedly claims that it has no intention of stationing American troops in Bosnia indefinitely. Yet it has not laid the groundwork for any other acceptable outcome. The Dayton Accord seemed to suggest that foreign troops would eventually hand off to a single competent local political entity, the government of a reconstituted Bosnia. But progress toward this objective has been slow, and does not yet justify a turnover. How about a clear division and stable balance of power among different local factions-in other words, a partition? This is what many so-called realists have been arguing for, and what many cynics thought Dayton was secretly about, with its deferral of certain idealistic goals, like pursuing war criminals and resettling refugees, and acceptance of land gained by ethnic cleansing and aggression. But Clinton administration officials have stated adamantly that they consider partition unacceptable because it would be unjust, set a terrible example for the region, and lead to future conflict. Hence the administration has been left with no options other than chaos or some kind of follow-on force. It has tried to toss the hot potato to the Europeans, but they have tossed it right back, saying that they will not stay without the Americans-"one out, all out." So American troops took part in IFOR and the Stabilization Force (SFOR) and will likely be a part of whatever the next one is called too.

As for limitation, Bosnia was supposed to be the poster child for Lake's exit strategy doctrine, the place where tough love would force the wayward locals to see the error of their ways or be left to their sorry fate. It was okay to send American troops there because they would absolutely, positively be home in a year. The president said, "If we leave after a year, and they decide they don't like the benefits of peace and they're going to start fighting again, that does not mean NATO failed. It means we gave them a chance to make their peace and they blew it." Dayton negotiator Richard Holbrooke said, "We are not going to leave behind a force" after the one-year limit. "We think a year is sufficient. If a year doesn't work, two, three, or five years won't do either." Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman John Shalikashvili said, "I cannot imagine circumstances changing in such a way that we would remain in Bosnia" beyond one year.

At the end of the year the troops did come home, but a new deployment was sent out to take their place, and the love did not look so tough. SFOR carried a time limit too: "It is now the intent for the mission to end in June of 1998," said Shalikashvili, "and shortly thereafter for the troops to withdraw." But observers were already skeptical; one prominent columnist suggested that the deployment be called "Operation I Really Mean It This Time." Even Shalikashvili admitted to confusion, testifying that "everyone I've talked to has been unable to explain to me what it is that is going to happen during the period of time that would make the conditions at the end of [the SFOR deployment] worth taking the risk of bringing in a new force."

If the time limits on the Bosnia intervention have been disregarded, other limits-such as what the American forces are charged with doing-have been much more closely observed. This is apparently because the administration believes that trying to achieve ambitious goals on the ground might cause casualties. It has, therefore, left itself open to the charge, as one observer acidly put it, that the Bosnia deployment resembles nothing more than the moon landings, with the principal objective being to send men far away and bring them back safely.

As for contingency planning, the administration has taken great pains to avoid any unpleasant surprises, and the American troops have actually been safer in Bosnia than they would have been conducting routine training exercises. The administration has skillfully taken advantage of this fact to disarm its critics and bolster the case for a longer deployment. But this may prove too clever by half because it accomplishes little of lasting value while leaving the mission vulnerable to a quick loss of support should anything go wrong.

It seems fair to assume that despite the hopes of some in the administration, re-creating a unified Bosnia is beyond U.S. capabilities in the near future. But a withdrawal of foreign forces under present circumstances would probably precipitate a tragic and humiliating renewal of fighting and damage NATO's cohesion. And it seems unlikely that a purely European follow-on force will materialize as a deus ex machina. The real choice for the United States in Bosnia seems to be between remaining there indefinitely in pursuit of Dayton's ambitious goals or moving toward a morally unpleasant but practical settlement that might permit most of the outside forces to leave before the millennium. The latter is looking increasingly attractive, but this is not because open-ended commitments are always inadvisable. It is because the Clinton administration has yet to make a strong case to Congress or the nation why its current half hearted pursuit of the goals of the Dayton Accord is worth such a commitment. The disparity between what the administration claims is at stake and what it is prepared to do is confusing. When Secretary Cohen was a senator, he put the issue squarely: "If you feel that the mission is worthy enough to make the commitment, then you shouldn't put a time frame to it." In Bosnia, as with other interventions, the focus should not be on developing exit strategies, but on articulating precise American interests and coming up with ways to advance them.