Military Review English Edition November-December 2014 | Page 90

and negative ways. Social network analysis (SNA) is a
method for discovering and describing webs of relationships among social actors.3 By describing soldiers
as entangled nodes within a web-like social network
in which they are connected by numerous (perhaps
unseen) affiliations or shared characteristics, this essay
proposes that commanders can make use of SNA in
two ways. First, the approach can serve in a reactive
sense, by enabling commanders to develop and execute wide-impact and strategic disciplinary choices in
the wake of criminal misconduct. Second, but no less
important, SNA can serve as part of a philosophy of
proactive leader engagement and risk management.
This article will focus on the first mode, and it will
introduce potentially innovative applications of SNA
within military justice practice.

Introduction
SNA takes as its fundamental premise the common
sense notion that we are products of our social environments. Where we live, what jobs we take, our race,
our gender, our personal hobbies, the sports we play,
our children, our children’s friends, our addictions, and
our institutional affiliations are just some of the factors
that give color to our personas and drive our interpersonal actions. Inasmuch as we orient our lives around
what others close to us are doing, thinking, saying, and
believing, each of the factors we share with other people can be modeled as a link between them and us.
In an early (1991), influential merger of the fields
of SNA and police work, Malcolm Sparrow’s critical
contribution to SNA was to characterize its attributes as relevant to strategic decision making for very
practical, socially-significant ends—such as fighting
crime. In arguing that SNA’s tools could and should
be applied by civilian law enforcement investigators,
Sparrow argued that fiscal constraints and ambiguities
in evidence made conventional police investigations
outmoded and inefficient. He then illustrated how
SNA’s techniques could better allocate public resources
for the more effective and efficient targeting of criminal enterprises.4
Building on that premise, SNA has potential utility
for military leaders attempting to disarm informal
or formal networks of soldiers tied together by their
misconduct. Similarly, it has potential in the manner
in which military leaders might disable networks tied
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together by collective disenfranchisement or low morale. In other words, network analysis can help to upset
a cart full of bad apples.5
First, I will sketch some of the basic conceptual
elements of SNA. Then, I will propose some ways in
which commanders could adopt this perspective to
more accurately understand just how entangled their
soldiers are with one another, including some ways in
which commanders could use their increased situational awareness to make more strategic, warranted, and
appropriate disciplinary choices.
While certainly not a panacea for widespread
indiscipline, SNA could improve command visibility over these common problems in a way deserving
more robust attention and critical review. To facilitate
such a review, I will conclude by laying a foundation
of common-sense variables: case-by-case factors that
b