Chateau Generals in the Twenty-First Century: Moral Hazards Associated with Remote Governance of Military Forces

Militaries are typified by exaggerated asymmetries of status and remote governance. Using a mixed method design, this article examines the relational dynamic in a Special Forces unit between senior leaders and their subordinates, from an operator perspective. Specifically, content and thematic analyses are used to process depth interviews of Australian Special Air Service veterans formerly deployed in Afghanistan. A persistent respondent theme is the dissonance generated and disconnect of senior leaders headquartered elsewhere in a peacetime country. This seemingly pragmatic model comes at the expense of empathy, complementarity, and co-production. From the data two moderating variables are induced: relational distance and risk engineering. These two variables underpin a dual mediating hypothesis conceptualizing the senior leader/subordinate gulf. The cautionary tale here is senior leaders ensconced in social distance and status quo risk estrangement from not only the enlisted, but a wider society invested in equity, co-production, and human rights. The corollary implication is that estranged and sclerotic military governance inhibits change and encourages dissonance.