‘Exit Strategy’ for Somalia Plows New Military Ground : Policy: Six-month deadline praised as recognition of limited U.S. stake. But foes could wait out departure.

By setting a six-month deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Somalia, President Clinton is attempting a feat never before accomplished in the annals of U.S. military action: laying out a clear “exit strategy” in case the American effort fails.

Strategists praised the President’s decision as an attempt to recognize the limited U.S. national interest in Somalia. But they also warned that Clinton’s deadline could be self-defeating because it could invite adversaries in Mogadishu simply to wait the Administration out.

In earlier military actions, from the American Revolution to the Persian Gulf, leaders chose their goals and aimed for victory. If their efforts fell short, as in Vietnam and Beirut, they improvised a withdrawal--often amid agonizing national debate. But now, in Somalia, a new kind of U.S. bottom line has been publicly proclaimed. “We must . . . leave on our terms,” Clinton said. “We must do it right.”

The President’s decision solved his immediate problem, which was not in Somalia but in Congress: a roar of demands from lawmakers for an immediate withdrawal from East Africa after Somali attacks on U.S. troops. However, it raised questions about whether it makes sense militarily.

Arnold Kanter, a top State Department official in the George Bush Administration, said a six-month deadline could encourage Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid to hunker down and wait Clinton out. “With this kind of exit strategy, the bad guys know where your line is . . . and that doesn’t help you accomplish your goals,” he said.

“It’s a PR gimmick, not a military strategy,” complained Fred C. Ikle, a leading Pentagon official in the Ronald Reagan Administration. “If our troops come under attack on March 30 and hostages are taken, March 31 won’t look so good any more. It’s more important to set clear goals in terms of territory and control.”

Still, noted former Reagan Administration official Chester A. Crocker, “Clinton’s position now is a whole lot better than it was 24 hours ago,” when he was battling demands to pull out all U.S. troops.

The six-month deadline could have another positive effect, Crocker said: “It could light a fire under the United Nations” to assemble a stronger multinational force to police Somalia after the Americans leave.

In either case, the next half-year in Somalia will provide the first test of an idea that has rapidly become a major tenet of the Clinton Administration’s doctrine on using military force abroad: the principle that every deployment should have an explicit “exit strategy”--a way out, in case things go awry--even before it begins.

Administration officials credit Gen. Colin L. Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as a major proponent of the idea.

“It’s very useful, when you’re getting into something, to have a pretty good idea how you’re going to get out of it,” Powell said recently. “It seems pretty straightforward to me.”

Powell defined an “exit strategy” largely as a clear set of goals, so that military leaders know what to aim for. In Somalia, he said, “the exit strategy will get the political process in place. . . . Put a functioning police force in, turn more and more over to the U.N. so that the U.S. can move out.”

But Clinton and his aides have gone a significant step further, saying that they will commit U.S. military forces to action only with an explicit escape clause in case the mission proves too costly.

In Somalia, the escape clause is Clinton’s six-month deadline. Asked what the Administration will do if its goals for Somalia are not reached by March 31, a senior White House aide shrugged and said, “If not, we’ve done our best.”

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, where U.S. military action is under consideration, the Administration has invoked a similar condition, saying it will commit troops only with “a clear time limit.”

It has been a popular point on Capitol Hill, where legislators want assurance that the new U.S. interventions will not turn into Vietnam-style quagmires--especially in a post-Cold War world where the national interest is ambiguous and war aims are muddy.

“This is partly a product of the new kind of mission we are undertaking, where the aims are humanitarian or idealistic,” said Terry Deibel, a strategist at the National War College. “Where there is no direct threat to the national interest, it becomes very difficult to calculate what costs the public is willing to bear.” So politicians, he said, try to set up escape hatches in case public support for a mission dries up--as it has in the case of Somalia.

Even some of Clinton’s critics believe it is a good idea to have some kind of “exit strategy,” if not the one the President chose. “It is very important for any government, before it gets into a war, to think long and hard about how it will get out,” said Ikle, a leading nuclear strategist.

“Throughout history, nine out of 10 wars started without clear goals or a plan to end them,” he said. “That’s one of the tragedies of modern war. . . . When Hitler invaded Poland, he didn’t know where that would lead. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they didn’t have an exit strategy in case things went wrong.”

So Clinton’s attempt to find a way out in Somalia “is basically to be welcomed,” he said.

Still, a variety of critics worry about the implications.

Deibel said he believes that the new policy will weigh too heavily against military engagement. “If you say you won’t get in until you know exactly how you’re getting out, that’s a pretty high standard. There aren’t too many real-world wars that allow you that luxury,” he said.

Even Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a longtime opponent of most U.S. military interventions, said that the idea will not work. “This notion that before we go into something, we must precisely know exactly when we’re getting out and how . . . is not a formulatable policy,” he said. “I don’t think we could have entered World War II under those circumstances.”

Better, these critics said, to set clearer goals--and then guard against what Deibel calls “entrapment,” the tendency to stay in a losing war for fear of losing face.

If things do go wrong, he noted, “you can do what Ronald Reagan did in Beirut. He said: ‘We’re out of here.’ It was nine months before a presidential election. And it didn’t hurt him a bit.”