Investigating yourself

Prof. Claire Simmons of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst has written an insightful post for West Point's Lieber Institute's Articles of War series: Military Investigations in Armed Conflict: Investigating Themselves?  Her take on the role of loyalty and military culture:

Finally, there are matters of loyalty and military culture which I believe are the main concerns behind the quip cited at the beginning of this post. ["We investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong."] This is because the armed forces are always, and explicitly so, institutions based on loyalty as a value which is encouraged and promoted. It is a value for which it is necessary for members to fight effectively and potentially lose their lives.

But suggesting that this loyalty will always be problematic is itself a problem. It is necessary to look instead at when this loyalty may have become “toxic,” when members of a specific group consider themselves above the law and will do anything to protect the members within. And it is also necessary to identify the catchment of this toxic loyalty. Is it present within a unit, a platoon, a division, a service, the armed forces as a whole? Or even something broader, such as along national, ethnic, or religious lines? Such toxic loyalty can indeed pervade spheres beyond the armed forces, in which case civilianising the process would not solve the problem.

Being a member of the same institution will not necessarily mean an investigator should be considered “toxically loyal” to all its members to a point where they would try to cover up their misconduct. In fact, in some cases, it may have the opposite effect, as individuals loyal to their institution might want to weed out such behaviour.

These cultural issues linked to impunity go beyond issues of independence and impartiality, and merit further research, given the wide-ranging issues tied to the closing of ranks and the “wall of silence” in multiple investigations into military conduct. Further independence in such contexts would not solve these challenges and may in fact aggravate them.

Prof. Simmons's post is based on her recent, timely book, Military Investigations in Armed Conflict: Independence and Impartiality under International Law (Routledge 2024).