High-ranking soldiers don't commit treason for politics; they do it because their friends got promoted and they didn't.
April 16, 2026
Original Paper
Reason for Treason
SSRN · 6566864
The Takeaway
We imagine high-level traitors are driven by deep ideological shifts or moral convictions against their country's regime. But an analysis of 2,800 military officers shows that wartime treason is often just a byproduct of professional jealousy. When officers see their old schoolmates climbing the ladder while they stagnate, they aren't looking for a new cause—they're looking for a better boss. It turns out that perceived under-promotion and career envy are far more dangerous to national security than actual political disagreement. For the state, the biggest threat to loyalty isn't radicalization, but a messy HR department that makes people feel ignored.
From the abstract
Defections during war are extreme changes in loyalty. What motivates military officers to betray their motherland and serve the invaders? Using a novel dataset of career paths for over 2,800 high-ranking (colonels and generals) Nationalist (KMT) military officers during the Second SinoJapanese War (as part of World War II), we examine defection cases to Japanese puppet regimes. Three findings emerge. First, high-ranking KMT officers who advanced more slowly in their careers were more likely to d