Finishing the job: How American presidents justify exit strategies in humanitarian interventions

Abstract

Humanitarian interventions to stop mass atrocities are among America's most controversial uses of military force overseas since the end of the Cold War. While there is much research analysing justifications for and conduct of humanitarian interventions, there is very little scholarly investigation of how and why interventions end. Indeed, successive US presidents have struggled to implement exit strategies from humanitarian interventions with the outcome often dismissed as 'mission creep'.

In this thesis, I use US presidential rhetoric as a way to understand exit strategy dynamics in humanitarian interventions. In particular, I explore how American presidents publicly justified their exit strategies in four interventions from 1991--2011---northern Iraq, Somalia, Kosovo and Libya. My normative concepts analysis of more than 700 texts shows how presidents craft exit strategies through practices of public justification and legitimation to their domestic audience. I argue a president's discursive engagement is constrained by three groups of normative expectations shaping the realm of imagined possibilities for how America should use force when responding to humanitarian crises; specifically the US should: (1) fulfil its moral responsibility to stop atrocities, fight evil and promote political transformation; (2) win its military engagements; and (3) avoid quagmires. These expectations frame justifiable uses of military force, but also exist in tension with one another, and are in turn affected by changing battlefield conditions, past intervention experiences, domestic and international pressures, and personal preferences. How presidents navigate these tensions affects their exit decisions, including failures to implement exit strategies.

My thesis is the first comparative analysis of America's exit strategies in four of the most significant humanitarian interventions of the post-Cold War era. By using public justification analysis to illuminate decision-making dynamics, I overcome the shortcomings of applying extant victory, war termination and end state planning theories to humanitarian interventions. By identifying the normative constraints on exit strategy decision-making, I demonstrate how and why mission creep occurs. My thesis provides evidence for military planners and policy advisers, having decided to use force to stop a mass atrocity, to take normative expectations seriously in considering when and how troops will withdraw. Show more