Mission Command Responsibility

When Justice Paul Brereton’s report on alleged Australian war crimes in Afghanistan was released, it sent shockwaves in Australia and internationally. It confronted and confirmed uncomfortable truths: that within Australia’s most elite military units, a small number of personnel had likely engaged in unlawful killings, and that a culture of silence had allowed those acts to persist. In the aftermath of the “Brereton Report,” a lot of ink has been spilt on war crimes and command responsibility.

One thing that has been missing, though, was in the opening pages.

The Inquiry has found no evidence that there was knowledge of, or reckless indifference to, the commission of war crimes, on the part of commanders at troop/platoon, squadron/company or Task Group Headquarters level, let alone at higher levels such as Commander Joint Task Force 633, Joint Operations Command, or Australian Defence Headquarters. Nor is the Inquiry of the view that there was any failure at any of those levels to take reasonable and practical steps that would have prevented or detected the commission of war crimes. It is easy now, with the benefit of retrospectivity, to identify steps that could have been taken and things that could have been done. However, in judging the reasonableness of conduct at the time, it needs to be borne in mind that few would have imagined some of our elite soldiers would engage in the conduct that has been described; for that reason there would not have been a significant index of suspicion, rather the first natural response would have been disbelief. Secondly, the detailed superintendence and control of subordinates is inconsistent with the theory of mission command espoused by the Australian Army, whereby subordinates are empowered and entrusted to implement, in their own way, their superior commander’s intent. That is all the more so in a Special Forces context where high levels of responsibility and independence are entrusted at relatively low levels, in particular to patrol commanders (para. 28).

I found this paragraph jarring at the time, and it has gnawed away at me since. How can a leadership philosophy—mission command—somehow circumvent black letter legal responsibility?

It was a subtle, but consequential, paragraph. By invoking mission command as an explanation, the report transformed manoeuvre warfare into a kind of legal shield. The move risks hollowing out both concepts, because while mission command must remain at the heart of Western military leadership, it was never meant to absolve commanders of responsibility for the culture and conduct of their forces. It risks being accepted at face value.

The Origins of Mission Command

Mission command is often spoken about as a modern management buzzword, but its origins are centuries old and deeply pragmatic.

In 1806, the Prussian Army suffered catastrophic defeat at the hands of Napoleon’s forces at Jena and Auerstedt. The humiliation was not simply one of arms, but of philosophy. The Prussian model of rigid, centralised control could not compete with the tempo, initiative, and adaptability of Napoleon’s commanders.

In the decades that followed, a generation of Prussian reformers—Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Moltke among them—reimagined the art of command. They developed Führen mit Auftrag, literally “lead by mission.” Instead of prescribing every step, the commander would state the intent and the desired outcome, leaving subordinates free to determine the method.

Moltke the Elder captured the essence of the concept when he wrote, “Therefore no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.” The solution was not tighter control, but smarter trust. It involved subordinates trained and empowered to act within the commander’s intent, adjusting to circumstances faster than any centralised order could allow. It follows the vignette that during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, when a Prussian officer defended himself by arguing he was simply following orders, his commander reportedly responded, “His Majesty made you a Major because he believed you would know when not to obey his orders.”

Mission Command and Responsibility

What are we to make of this? Has Auftragstaktik always been intended as a sort of shield from command responsibility? I argue no. Prince Frederick Charles was trying to promote initiative, not distance himself from legal responsibility, noting, of course, that command responsibility did not exist as a legal construct then.

Auftragstaktik is built on discipline, professionalism, and a shared understanding of purpose. The subaltern who exercised initiative was not disobedient; he was the embodiment of the commander’s trust. When modern Western militaries, including Australia’s, adopted mission command in the late twentieth century, they did so for the same reasons the Prussians did: war moves faster than orders. Communications fail. Situations evolve. The commander’s greatest asset is not perfect control, but capable subordinates who understand both what to achieve and why. As an Infantry Officer, I was trained that mission command is about centralised intent, decentralised execution.

But that shorthand misses its moral depth. It is not about laissez-faire leadership or benign neglect. It is about knowing your people. A good commander understands that some subordinates need close supervision and others need space to operate; that the art of leadership lies in calibrating control, not surrendering it. Mission command is relational, not mechanical. It demands trust, but trust earned through familiarity and professional judgment. Leadership is an active responsibility. Commanders who trust without understanding have not embraced mission command, they have abandoned it.

That is why it is so dangerous to treat mission command as an excuse for ignorance. It was designed to make units more responsible, not less.

Command Responsibility: The Legal Mirror

If mission command is the soul of Western military leadership, command responsibility is its legal conscience. It is the doctrine that ensures decentralised empowerment does not dissolve into moral drift.

Born from the ruins of the Second World War, the principle took shape at the trial of Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita. Though Yamashita had not personally ordered atrocities in the Philippines, the tribunal found he had failed to control his forces and prevent the crimes. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld his conviction, establishing that commanders could be criminally responsible for failing to prevent or punish war crimes they knew or should have known about. It seems paradoxical that we would accept an argument proposed by Yamashita, that mission command absolved him of command responsibility. It was dismissed then and should be dismissed now.

This became the cornerstone of modern international humanitarian law. The Rome Statute under Article 28 reaffirmed the same idea: responsibility flows not only downward, through orders, but upward, through the duty of control. The test is not omniscience, it is diligence. Did commanders establish systems of supervision, reporting, and discipline adequate to the risks? Did they act when warning signs appeared? These are questions of command climate, not of proximity to the battlefield.

In the Australian case, the Brereton Report concluded that while unlawful killings occurred, senior officers were too far removed, both geographically and structurally, to have known. The Army’s decentralised “mission command” culture was presented almost as an exculpatory condition – an operational reality that made oversight impossible.

This is precisely where the reasoning falters. Mission command may decentralise decision-making, but it does not decentralise accountability. The commander’s duty under law is to maintain effective control. That duty is not to watch every action, but to ensure that systems exist to detect and prevent wrongdoing. If those systems fail, the failure belongs to the commander.

Why Mission Command Still Matters

It would be easy, in reaction to the Brereton affair, to swing in the opposite direction; to argue that decentralisation itself is the problem and that that centralised, prescriptive command can guarantee compliance. It is important to reiterate that mission command is not the problem; it is the bedrock of successful manoeuvre warfare. With volunteer forces, and small militaries, many States cannot afford to approach warfare as a matter of attrition and centralised leadership. It must remain decentralised and manoeuvrable.

The alternative—a culture of micromanagement, fear, and rigid control—is a return to the very rigidity the Prussians abandoned two centuries ago. In complex, high-tempo operations, overcontrol kills initiative, paralyses decision-making, and suffocates the professional judgment we claim to value. It would be an even greater mistake.

The real lesson of Brereton is not that mission command failed, but that its preconditions failed. Mission command works only where there is trust, education, ethical leadership, and an unbroken chain of professional understanding between commander and commanded. When those erode—when training lapses, culture curdles, and oversight becomes tokenistic—mission command mutates into something unrecognisable.

Commanders who truly practice mission command know their people deeply enough to calibrate freedom to competence. They know which subordinate can act independently and which needs guidance. They anticipate how units will interpret intent and where misjudgment might creep in. They listen, question, and verify, not because they distrust, but because trust without understanding is negligence.

There is another way to reconcile mission command with command responsibility. It is to see them as two sides of the same coin. Mission command asks commanders to trust their subordinates, to empower them to act with initiative. Command responsibility demands that commanders remain answerable for what those subordinates do. The link between them is understanding, commanders who know their people, communicate intent clearly, and set ethical boundaries to ensure that initiative remains lawful. In this sense, command responsibility is not the enemy of mission command; it is its guarantor. It codifies, in law, the moral logic that underpins good leadership: that freedom and accountability rise together. There must always be mission command responsibility.

Concluding Thoughts

Brereton’s report, for all its courage, missed that harmony. By using mission command as an explanation for ignorance, it turned a philosophy of engaged leadership into a doctrine of distance.

The tragedy of the Brereton Report is that it confused the two. It treated mission command as a reason commanders could not know, rather than as the very reason they should have. It let a leadership philosophy cloud a legal duty. The law does not ask commanders to foresee every act of violence. It asks them to know their people, to understand the patterns of their organisation, and to act when the signs of rot appear.

***

Dr Samuel White is the Senior Research Fellow in Peace and Security at the National University of Singapore’s Centre for International Law.

The views expressed are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense. 

Articles of War is a forum for professionals to share opinions and cultivate ideas. Articles of War does not screen articles to fit a particular editorial agenda, nor endorse or advocate material that is published. Authorship does not indicate affiliation with Articles of War, the Lieber Institute, or the United States Military Academy West Point.

Photo credit: U.S. Marine Corps, Master Sgt. Sarah Nadeau