re: "Libya Exit Strategy"

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway ("an online journal of politics and foreign affairs analysis") should know better than this.

Money quote(s):

"an elementary concept on war planning, the requirement for an exit strategy."

Actually, although it apparently took Sec. Rumsfeld until 2005 to say it, the Weekly Standard discussed it as early as 2003: you want a victory strategy, not an "exit strategy."

"It’s a fundamental precept of national security policy going back to at least the writings of Carl von Clausewitz that wars are fought to achieve political ends and it follows that military strategy must be tailored to achieve political ends. Indeed, countries can lose wars in which their armies are absolutely dominant on the field of battle–as American forces were in Vietnam–if the fighting does not achieve the sought political objectives.

In order for military planners to match tactics and strategy, they must know what the end game is. In the case of total war, such as we fought in World War II, that’s pretty simple: The unconditional surrender of the enemy. In the case of humanitarian interventions, counterinsurgencies, and stability operations, however, it’s much harder.

The concept of an exit strategy is designed to spotlight this dilemma. Simply put: How do we know when we’ve won the damn thing and can stop fighting?"

I'm as Clausewitzian as the next guy (perhaps more), and agree with Mr. Joyner about that. It's the notion of an exit strategy versus one for victory or even a set of objectives or goals, an end state that is worth all the trouble, blood, and treasure that vexes me.

Language is important. The very use of the word "exit" together with "strategy" messages our essential unseriousness about the dead serious business of warfare, and causes our allies many sleepless nights. It signals that our most important objective is to leave, to be uninvolved, even as we commit men and materiel to a conflict.

"The bottom line is that the colonels Ricks is hearing complaining about the lack of an exit strategy aren’t asking for all the answers, just the most important one: What are they fighting for?"

Here we agree. What is our strategic grand objective? From that all lesser operational and strategic issues must necessarily flow.