48 hours
In a new course, students learn first-hand about the complexity of decision-making dynamics during international crisis.
By Anne Gibson Ph.D. ’95 Photos by Tammy Woodard M.A. ’98
At approximately 21:40 EDT on March 18, 2007, “CIA Director” Shayna Woodard ’08 receives intelligence indicating that the Iranian Planning Ministry in the city of Ahwaz has been bombed. Shortly thereafter, at 22:11, British “Chief of Defense” Daniel Smith receives a report that an Iranian truck, possibly containing members of an Iranian, ethnic-Arab guerilla movement, is headed toward the Iran-Iraq border. At 14:13 on March 19, the British commander in Basra, Iraq, asks Smith to contact the U.S. government regarding the translation and authentication of documents, ostensibly detailing Iranian nuclear plans, brought by the guerillas to the U.K. compound in Basra.
Over the next day and a half, students from Clark and University of Northampton, England, respond in real time to the escalating, but simulated, national security crisis —an elaborate semester-long active-learning exercise designed by Clark government and international relations professors Brian Cook and Kristen Williams.
For several years now, Cook and Williams have introduced into the curriculum of some of their courses brief national-security crisis simulations, where students resolve a crisis through role playing members of government agencies, such as the White House Office, CIA, National Security Council, State Department and Department of Defense. This past spring is the first time they have offered a course completely structured around a single simulation, which culminated with a two-day exercise in collaboration with a team of British professors from the University of Northampton, Jon Gorry and Glyn Daly. Gorry and Daly arrived on campus with six of their students on March 18 to take part in the simulation.
Beyond the classroom
While the immediate objective of the exercise was for the students to find a resolution to the simulated crisis that satisfied the policy and political goals of both the United States and the United Kingdom, the professors ’ pedagogical goals were much broader. Cook, Daly, Gorry and Williams hoped that the students who participated in the realistic, hands-on simulation would gain a better understanding of decision-making dynamics than they could through simply reading a textbook or attending a lecture.
At the start of the semester, the Clark students began by determining who would be assigned to and head each government agency. Each agency scheduled its own meetings, researched relevant topics, and prepared a white paper outlining what it determined to be the country ’s top-four national-security threats. On February 15, each agency submitted its white paper to “President” Ben Smith ’07 and his staff for review, and on February 22 the whole class assembled for a presidential “summit.” Each agency had 5-10 minutes to present its concerns and respond to questions from Smith.
The security crisis came to a head on March 18, when students were notified of the fictitious bombing in Ahwaz. Over the next 48 hours, the professors sent the American and British teams new information —streams of intelligence “chatter”—about unfolding events. Some “intelligence” was based on crisis-management decisions the teams had just made.
Daly relished the role, which he described as “largely that of a minor, and slightly sadistic, Greek god: setting lures and conundrums to perplex and otherwise torment the students. ”
“The professors did a really good job of throwing out red herrings all over the place, ” says Omar Lamrani ’09, who played the role of the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to Lamrani, they received so much irrelevant information that they were very much thrown off the path initially.
Theory meets real life
Both the British and American students found that participating in the simulation made their readings and lectures come alive. “Although books provide a good outline of the basic elements to be aware of where national security is concerned, none of these really became clear until we were actually taking part in the simulation, ” says U.K. “Foreign Secretary” Chloe Civil.
During the two-day exercise, special rooms including a “White House situation room” were set up on campus, where teams could assemble at any time of the day or night. Technology played an important role in the simulation. Web cams were set up to record the decision-making process during the crisis portion of the simulation, and students had computers with Internet and e-mail access, telephones, videoconferencing equipment and laptops at their disposal. A mock cable news Web site “broadcasting” information from Arab sources was set up. And Clark’s Blackboard courseware provided each team with a venue to post information and communicate, and the professors with a site to monitor the action.
| 15:10, March 20, 2007: The State of Israel, having discovered independently the full extent of the threat posed by Iran, responded in its perceived national interest by launching an air strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Based on policy research before and during the simulation, including close information-sharing and collaboration, the U.S. and British teams decide that they have no choice but to shoot down the Israeli jets. “Air Force Chief of Staff” John Alsop issued the final order to U.S. forces to shoot down the Israeli jets at 16:11. Eva Brandon ’10, “Chief of Staff” to “President” Ben Smith, issued the final communication to all simulation participants concluding the exercise at 16:52.
For Lamrani, the simulation offered a chance to step into the shoes of decision makers. |
“We study leaders and why they make the decisions that they do, and you can’t help but wonder, ‘What would I have decided, had I been in that position?’” he muses. “This simulation gives you the chance to make your own decisions and see how they play out. ”
“I don’t think there was a decision ever made that was like, ‘oh well, it doesn’t really matter, it’s only a class,’” says Woodard. “President” Ben Smith ’07 agrees, “We were so involved in it that we wanted to make the right decisions.”
Although the students prepared extensively before the actual simulation, it did not mean that they had the solutions to all possible scenarios in hand, notes Ben Raynak ’09, who played the Secretary of State.
“The research process never stopped. For me, much of the learning—and there was a lot—happened when, for example, I would get a report from our Nigerian embassy in Lagos, indicating that an extreme separatist group had taken several American oil workers hostage. We ’d never heard of this group, so we had to go research it. We’d come back with pages and pages about who these people are. That happened over and over again with different types of things. ”
International perspective
The Clark-Northampton collaboration allowed both American and British students to see how different political contexts informed a bilateral decision-making process. Students and faculty considered the international dimension of the simulation an important part of the learning process.
“For the Clark students, one of the most rewarding parts of the experience was interacting with members of the U.K. team, and seeing how they thought and saw things differently, ” says Cook, explaining that the British and American students had to respond to the crisis based on the politics and concerns within their respective governments, and reflect and relay that perspective back to the decision making that was happening on the other team.
“By participating in a simulation like this you gain insight into each others’ cultures and develop ideas of how you might better work together to achieve common goals, ” explains British student Jon Bowles, who represented the U.K.’s Joint Intelligence Committee. “When put in a situation like we were, you begin to focus, not on your cultural differences, but on shared values. ”
| 18:00, March 20, 2007: American and British students sit down to dinner and a debriefing with Cook, Williams, Gorry and Daly. The course concluded with each student submitting a research paper assessing the implementation of his or her role, and exploring whether or not he or she would have made the same decision to shoot down the Israeli planes and why or why not. |
Cook hopes that the preparation that students received from participating in the simulation might have wider repercussions in the future. “My glorious vision,” he explains, “is that we’re training people who are actually prepared to move into decision-making positions at a national or international level.
Learn more about this course.
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Clarknews Summer 2007
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Derek Lundquist '07
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Ben Raynak '09, Shayna Woodard '08, Charmaine Milder '08 and Jonathan Webb '08
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