| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
'Before we send our troops into a foreign country, we should know how and when we're going to get them out', US National Security Adviser Anthony Lake intoned in 1996, two years after the precipitate withdrawal of US forces from Somalia. Yet rarely has this requirement been met. Planning for exit as precisely as Lake's comments would suggest is difficult if not impossible, as the Clinton administration would discover in Bosnia and Herzegovina only months later. No one can foresee the circumstances that will obtain, and the course adjustments they may necessitate, once an operation has been launched. But this is not to say that more informed planning for exit is not possible. Not only has the subject of exit strategies received comparatively little sustained scholarly attention; it is also fair to say that policy in this area has been more ad hoc than carefully thought out.
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