In literature on public support for military missions, political discord has been criticised, because it is claimed that having a single strategic narrative as a basis for consensus helps foster such support. In this chapter the author starts from the perspective of the primacy of politics. The chapter …

The author reflects on the nature of exit from state-building missions and the challenge of evaluating it. He does this by first discussing the growing importance of evaluation and the conditions required for a proper evaluation as exposed in the professional evaluation literature, He refers here to …

Overview of recent issues central to political, military, and academic debates about political and military exit strategies from conflicts and wars. One important concept is the supposed political military divide, time and again expressed in the dichotomy end states versus end dates.

Strategic communication includes all messages and activities across the levels of war in order to affect target audiences and to encourage certain behaviour. It can be divided into a horizontal way, the way the messages and activities are crafted and sent to touch the public, and a vertical way, the …

In crisis areas, military and civilian missions are often simultaneously active, but they have different mandates and are executed by different organisations. Also the way those organisations leave a country after an intervention differs. This article provides a comparison between the military (ISAF/NTM-A) …

The introduction to NL ARMS 2015 "The dilemma of leaving" povides an overview of recent issues central to political, military, and academic debates about political and military exit strategies from conflicts and wars.

This article reviews the international efforts in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1991. It concludes that while there have been several strategies of dealing with that country both during and after the war, very few of these have actually produced the desired outcomes. In spite of successes in the sphere …

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 …

The comprehensive approach was deviced to facilitate cooperation between civilian and military actors, to tackle causes of instability and to create a more safe and secure environment in areas of conflict. Due to weak governance and with police and military not up to their jobs, a Provincial Reconstruction …

The moral dimension of exit is closely related to the moral dimension of entry. Notably, when the entry is highly questioned from a moral perspective, by many different actors, there are bound to be moral problems with regard to exit as well. This point will be illustrated by a discussion of the situation …