Samenvatting

Article that presents the main conclusions of the book "The dilemma of leaving : political and military exit strategies" organised around three questions: 1) "What is exit?" 2) "How can we understand exit? and 3) "What can we do about exit?". The first question deals with the definitional ambiguity of exit and the increasing complexity of the underlying state-building missions. It is observed that exit is in fact often a transition or a continuation of the mission in another form. Another element is the need to properly contextualise missions and their exit, while that same context is difficult to grasp for outsiders. Moreover, it was found that domestic and international political factors determine nature and timing of exit often more than do real developments or achievements on the ground. Attention is also paid to the question whether exit should be determined by achieving end states or should be done at a previously set end date. Reality shows that combinations of dates and states can be used and exit may take place in phases or differentlly per sector of activity. Similarly, establishing whether a mission was a succes or failure is a multiplex issues, for which often no aggregate answer can be given, as results vary along the different dimensions of modern integrated missions. Understanding exit can benefit from a multi-disciplinary approach that includes, next to more measurable components, attention to the construction of narratives, discourses and frames. Explicit attention to ethics and morality is also called for. Though there are examples of a political and military divide in some of the cases described, a recent case study also found growing convergence. Exit can be improved by refining doctrines, strategies and assessment frameworks to better include exit, and through learning from past mistakes by systematically carried out operations assessments and evaluations. It was also suggested to continue studying exits and derive typologies and categorisation from such multiple studies, and to look into institutional measures and military culture as a pertinent explanatory factor of exit's success.