To Reflect or Deflect: Assessing Internal Accountability in the U.S. Military

Professor Heidi Urben from Georgetown University will give a presentation at the MIT Security Studies Program's Wednesday Seminar.

Summary: The U.S. military's approach to accountability overemphasizes individual actions and decisions rather than institutional factors. As a result, this often leads to institutional failures of accountability through an insufficient acknowledgment of the military's role in poor outcomes, an inadequate investigation and assessment of institutional problems, and consequently, too little reform to address these issues. This paper offers a novel framework of institutional accountability and uses that to examine two contemporary cases: the U.S. military's failures in the war in Afghanistan and its struggle to meaningfully combat sexual assault and sexual harassment within the ranks.