Why ordinary soldiers commit atrocities: an interactionist framework for forensic and legal accountability

Understanding extreme violence in military contexts requires integrating psychological, psychiatric, legal, and moral perspectives. This commentary examines how individuals without prior criminal history or diagnosable psychopathology may become involved in, or accused of, unlawful violence during military operations. Drawing on social psychology, forensic psychiatry, and military psychology research — including contemporary work on moral injury — it advances an interactionist framework in which extreme violence emerges from the convergence of individual vulnerability, situational pressure, group dynamics, and organisational culture. Neither individual pathology nor situational determinism alone provides an adequate explanation. Implications are considered for forensic psychiatry and law across Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and international tribunals, selected for their relevance to Australian military accountability. The paper argues for a dual accountability model that preserves individual responsibility while recognising structural causation, and cautions that the same evidentiary rigour required to establish guilt must equally protect the innocent.