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cont.
So the alternative is walking out. This can happen slowly or rapidly depending on how much political support (time) they have at home.
1. Political support: drawdown and negotiate
The book puts forward three usual reasons why political support for the commitment still could exist: the "rally round the flag" effect, the arguments about sunk costs, and preserving national honour - as the book puts it, the public is "susceptible" to these types of arguments. The political support allows time to maintain the combat while preparing for the US troops to withdraw and for negotiations with the enemy. It is very interesting what they write about the negotiation, I'll quote it in full in the next post. The example here is the Korean War. In 1950 November the Chinese entered, and Washington briefly entertained various ideas, including invading China and using nuclear weapons. Then it was decided they'll negotiate peace with the Chinese and decide the fate of Korea together. It took 6 months until the negotiations could start after sufficient bloodletting. And another 1,5 years until they reached peace. Well cease fire.
2. Lack of political support: rapid liquidation
This usually happens in case of small troop deployments or proxy forces. In 1982 a multinational force intervened in the Lebanese civil war, and the US found itself in escalating fire exchanges with Syria. After two American planes were shot down, both Democrats and Republicans started to demand withdrawal and in the end Reagan was pressured into doing so.
3. Military defeat
Sometimes...
As in previous cases the client faces a military problem, that elicits intervention, but in this case new or further intervention seems pointless, and they know it would make no difference. The US might intervene if they see that defeat can be postponed to later time, and perhaps situation changes during that time so it can be turned to a win, or at least leave the defeat to the next president to deal with who cares. But in the cases which fall into this category they don't even see these possibilities, now they just hope they can do a "soft landing", where they might preserve a foothold, or save, rescue some of the key members of the client regime. They hope they can salvage what's possible.
These military defeats can occur when the US not intervening, just doing routine maintenance. They see the military problem rising which will topple the client regime, but they don't lift a (military) finger. Cuba, 1958, they saw Batista is in trouble, they offered him an exile in Florida, they tried for a "third force" to step in, but was no way of leaving Castro out.
Nationalist China in the 40's was a client of US, and they intervened by sending weapons and advisors (non-combat military intervention). The 1947 communist campaign occured and they considered sending combat troops, but Washington rejected the idea, and by 1949 what they could salvage was Taiwan where the KMT had to withdraw to.