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GOVT299: Directed Study on National Security Crisis Simulation
In this course, government and international relations faculty Brian Cook and Kristen Williams provide students with a hands-on way to understand the process of national security decision making. |
Course overview
Government and international relations professors Brian Cook and Kristen Williams want their students to gain an understanding of what it is like to be a decision maker in a U.S. government agency responsible for foreign policy and national security.
To accomplish this goal, they set up a semester-long simulation in which each student was assigned to be a member of one of the following "agencies":
- President and Staff
- State Department
- Joint Chiefs of Staff
- Department of Defense
- National Security Advisor
- CIA
- U.S. Ambassador to the U.K.
Over the duration of the semester, Cook and Williams at random times sent out bits of intelligence that students, in their roles as members of the above agencies, had to respond to. Students were expected to research their agencies to understand their roles and responsibilities, so as to allow them to participate as realistically a manner as possible. Agencies worked together to determine courses of action and make policy. There was no set class schedule; rather, students had to set their own meeting schedules and agendas, delegate responsibility among themselves, and conduct research on a variety of U.S. and foreign policy topics to ensure that intelligence was appropriately evaluated and acted upon.
Then, for a 48-hour period in mid-March, Williams and Cook staged a national security "crisis" centered around intelligence indicating that a group of Iranian ethnic Arabs had fled across the border into Irag, carrying what were thought to be plans of an Iranian nuclear build-up. During this part of the semester, Clark students were joined on site by a team of faculty and students from the United Kingdom who joined in the simulation as representatives of their own government. American and British students worked round the clock to try to resolve the crisis.
The crisis portion of the simulation ended with students and faculty attending a dinner and debriefing. Each Clark student spent the remainder of the semester preparing a closing paper as a final assignment.
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Left to right
back row: Brian Burns '07 and Clark professor Brian Cook
front row: University of Northampton professors Glyn Daly and Jon Gorry, Pete Stein '07, Clark professor Kristen Williams
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