Military Review English Edition January-February 2015 | Page 80

Analysis of the network yielded several interesting observations. First, the model showed that
the Australians were more central than U.S. officers
within the network, and analysis of centrality measures (not shown here) suggested that in this network,
Australians held the most “important” social position.
This was expected due to sampling bias. The interviews were conducted with 14 Australians and 13
New Zealanders. Intuitively, one would expect them
to have closer relationships among themselves and
talk with people in their countries’ defense institutions more than with people from other countries.
However, it was surprising that despite the sampling bias toward Australians and New Zealanders,
many Americans were in the network. Although no
Americans were interviewed, more were included in the
network than any other nationality.
We also found that the Australians and New
Zealanders in the network were more connected to
Americans than to any other foreigners, as shown in
table 1. This observation was somewhat surprising
also, especially in the case of the New Zealanders due
to the dissolution of the New Zealand-United States
leg of the Australia-New Zealand-United States
(ANZUS) Treaty in the mid-1980s, which ostensibly
lessened ties between the militaries of the United
States and New Zealand.
Even with a small sample of interviews, the strong
bias among Australian and New Zealand officers
toward U.S. officers provided persuasive evidence
for the hypothesis that the United States was in the
“middle.” This meant that when Australian or New
Zealand general officers encountered thorny issues
and reached beyond their domestic borders for advice
from similarly ranked peers, they were more likely
to call on an American than an officer of any other
nationality within the Anglosphere. This finding was
consistent with Nye and Slaughter’s overall conjecture—at the senior military officer level, the United

States holds a central position among these key allies
and partners in the Asia-Pacific.
We also hypothesized that the higher the rank
held, the more connections an officer would have.
Thus, high-ranking officers were expected to be more
central in the network model. However, our data
on this point yielded no correlation. This likely was
a function of sampling bias as many of the individuals interviewed were brigadier generals and major
generals. In a social network model, people who are
interviewed will be connected to everyone they name,
which increases their centrality in the network model.
Those who are not interviewed will appear in the
model only if someone else names them and so will
be less likely to be mentioned several times and have
several connections.
In summary, the network data in this study were
biased toward brigadier generals and major generals
from Australia and New Zealand, which limited the
analysis and conclusions we could draw. Despite this
heavy bias, the study provided persuasive evidence
that New Zealand and Australian military officers
were more socially connected to U.S. officers than
to those of any other country in the Anglosphere
nations of the Asia-Pacific region. This was particularly surprising among the New Zealanders since one
would expect them to name more Australian than
U.S. officers due to their geographic proximity and
Commonwealth relationship—but the data indicated
otherwise.

Qualitative Research
Qualitatively, our study aimed to determine the
nature of these social networks. Stanley McChrystal
once famously observed that in Iraq and Afghanistan,
“the [enemy’s] network is self-forming.”12 This assertion begs a question addressed in our research: how
do general officers acquire their networks? Are they
experience-based, as a result of military educational

Country

Australia

United States

Britain

Canada

New Zealand

Australians

2.22

1.11

0.18

0.13

0.53

New Zealanders

0.78

0.86

0.22

0.03

2.38

Table 1. Average Number of Connections for New Zealanders and Australians
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January-February 2015  MILITARY REVIEW