Military Review English Edition January-February 2015 | Page 78

T

his article reports the findings from a March
2013 social network analysis among senior military officers across the principal Anglosphere
nations of the Asia-Pacific region.1 We chose this area
for its increasing importance to the United States, particularly in light of President Barack Obama’s remarks
in a 2011 speech to Parliament in Canberra, Australia,
that “as a Pacific nation, the United States will play a
larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its
future.”2
In this research, we found persuasive evidence
supporting the hypothesis that U.S. military leaders
occupied a central position among senior military
officers in the Asia-Pacific, and that these officers’
personal networks were primarily experience-based (i.e.,
that they had resulted from extensive personal contacts
made during attendance at military schools and during
service at multinational headquarters such as those in
Iraq and Afghanistan). Among general and flag officers,
if a picture is worth a thousand words, a handshake is
worth a thousand e-mails. The policy implication is
that if the United States values its position in the AsiaPacific, it should support continued investment in these
experience-based networks.

Quantitative Research
Harvard University Professor Joseph Nye writes
that in the future, “much of the work of global governa nce will rely on formal and informal networks.”3 Nye
also finds that, due to the United States’ strength in this
respect, “predictions of an Asian century remain premature; the United States will remain more central in a
dense global web of governance than other countries.”4
Former Princeton University Professor Anne-Marie
Slaughter agrees. She argues that in contrast to a hierarchical conception of power, the new “measure of power
is connectedness,” and “the state with the most connections will be the central player.”5 Instead of “king of the
hill,” one should think “center of the circle,” and “here the
United States has a clear and sustainable edge.”6
Following these assertions about the U.S. role in the
Pacific, we wanted to answer two questions using social
network analysis: First, quantitatively, among general
and flag officers, what could we say about the United
States’ position in relationships with Australian and New
Zealand senior military leaders? Second, qualitatively,
how were these officers’ social networks constructed?
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For the purposes of this article, social network
analysis is “concerned with understanding the linkages among social entities and the implications of these
linkages.”7 Methodologically, social network analysis
does not fit easily into one domain, making it “inherently an interdisciplinary endeavor.”8 The first thing
one finds in social network analysis is that networks are
always changing—individuals leave assignments, and
people fall out of contact or gain new contacts—thus,
research always yields a snapshot in time. This modest
drawback, however, is mitigated by the fact that a momentary social network analysis is better than no study
at all. Moreover, there is a clear benefit to studying the
nature of allied relationships for a U.S. military that
consistently fights war as part of a multinational team.

Method of Sample Selection
We structured the study to narrowly gauge external perceptions of the United States among discrete
groups of senior officers in the Australian and New
Zealand militaries. Owing to the difficulty of obtaining
a random sample of the target network, we relied on
talking to those who could make themselves available
for a short interview. The lack of a random sample
means that our network may show some bias toward
more sociable general officers. If this is the case, it is also
important to note that we were able to obtain a significantly larger sample of the Asia-Pacific Anglosphere
network than is usual for social research; studies often
include well below 1 percent of a social network. Our
study netted 27 interviews of Australians and New
Zealanders. Twenty-one were general officers while six
were civilian academics who networked with military
officers.9 For a sense of relative sample size, there are
approximately 74 general officers in the Australian army
and 20 general officers in the New Zealand army.10 Thus,
our sample size for this study was more than 20 percent
of the total number of general officers in the Australian
and New Zealand armies, which is more than sufficient
to draw valid and reliable conclusions.
The relatively small size of the Australian and New
Zealand militaries provided the ability to obtain a meaningful sample size. In light of the difficulty of obtaining
a random sample, this was another reason these nations
were selected for study.
It is important to note that this study focused on
networked connections as perceived by Australian and
January-February 2015  MILITARY REVIEW