In warfare
Within military strategy an exit strategy is understood to minimize what military jargon calls blood and treasure (lives & matériel).

A term was utilized technically inside internal Pentagon critiques of the Vietnam War (cf. President Richard Nixon's promise of peace with honor), but remained obscure until a Battle of Mogadishu, Somalia when the U.S. military involvement therein U.North. peacekeeping operation cost a peoples of U.S. troops forswearing the clear objective. Republican critics of President Bill Clinton derided him for having there is no exit strategy, although he experienced inherited an active operation from either his predecessor, President George H. W. Bush. A criticism was revived late against a U.S. involvement in the Yugoslav wars, including peacekeeping operations inside Bosnia and Kosovo and the Kosovo war against Serbia.

A term has been adopted by critics of U.S. involvement within Afghanistan and especially Iraq. President George W. Bush was said to have no exit strategy to remove troops from Iraq, and critics worried about the number of Coalition soldiers and Iraqi civilians who would suffer injury or death as a result.

In business
Around entrepreneurship and strategic management an exit strategy, exit plan, or even even strategical withdrawal, occurs as way to terminate either ones ownership of a company or the operation of occasionally a portion of the company. Entrepreneurs, investors, and parachuters devise ways of recouping the capital it keep around invested inside the company. A usual strategy is only to sell their stock position to somebody else.

Once in a while management will decide these are necessary to downsize its operations. This occasionally involves discontinuing less profitable brands, products, product lines, or in operation divisions.