Model UN Recap

Doing the Model UN simulation was an interesting and powerful experience in many ways. For me it was different from many of the people in the class because I was the chair of the committee and got to see how the process worked from behind the scenes as well as see the prep work that was a part of our class and see how the process worked in the room itself. One of the first things that really stuck out to me was how hard it was to take off our Western, perhaps softer approaches to dealing with political issues. While I complimented the group on thinking very much like the Kuwaiti government in regards to balancing the competing demands to be more Western and the public’s strong opposition (and I hold to that) we were still very nice. A example that stands out to me was the very first crisis we had. The crisis had us deal with the fact that the parliament had threaten to remove the Prime Minister unless we gave in to their demands. We made a deal with them in order to get them to stop and change course. Now, it just so happens that this story pretty much happened in the real world. There were not explicit terms given but other than that it was the same. The response of the Emir was to dissolve the parliament and blame them for the crisis. I’m not going to get into whether he was right or wrong. It’s just interested that we handled the situation so differently. The idea of the simulation was to give people the freedom to act and decide but not let them do anything crazy or extremely unrealistic. I felt our response was in the mainstream so I allowed it but I could not help but notice our actions were affected by what we thought was fair and from a Western point of view.

There were also quite a few “real world” things that happened that would not have been expected and were not planned but in some ways made the simulation better to me. For example, the news messed up a story having Israel threaten us with military violence one time and made it sound like we wanted Syria to have Jerusalem in another case. In each situation, we had to do quick diplomatic work to make sure the matter did not get out of hand. Doing this is something that countries really have to deal with. Sometimes miscommunications occur and countries have to meet and deal with them. Sometimes the news blatantly mischaracterizes your position. That’s something that has to be dealt with in the real world. So in some ways, I think the simulation did good to have us deal with those kinds of things despite the fact that it was quite frustrating. It was surprising in some ways how difficult it was to make decisions. We debated for quite a while on a way to deal with the labor strike that we received. Eventually we had to vote on a few issues to come up with a firm decision on what to do. Again, that is what happens in real life (either that or those with the biggest guns win) and so it was a valuable part of the simulations.

Talking about the simulation just for itself there were some good things about it and some really bad things. I think it did give a somewhat accurate portrayal of the pace of issues that must be dealt with when crisis really picked up. Sometimes there were lull moments and those were used to deal with domestic issues but as soon as an international crisis occurred we put it down. The crisis that we received were very good and led to in-depth conversation that later led us to coming up with one of the domestic issues we discussed and tried to deal with. Besides that, the way that we dealt with other countries felt very real. We were reacting to news as it happened and looked through headlines of stories to see what if we should act in the situation or just let it go. Also, the diplomatic meetings seemed to go well. In many ways they were the most exciting part with people anxious to hear the reports of the diplomats who had gone down to talk with another country. I liked that we had China in this simulation though I feel there is more that could have been done to really flesh out their role in the region. It was difficult to figure out what they wanted which could be for a number of reasons including they were played by people from ECU who were not trained by people as close to the Model UN group.

My major complaint would be that we did not have enough crisis (we didn’t have any) for the second day. This made the day really seem unbearable. There was very little to do at the beginning until other countries were doing things and so people got bored and stopped paying attention. That made it really hard to keep people’s attention when things did start to happen. That said, even when they did pick up, it was more Kuwait inserting itself into situations that them dealing with Kuwait. This is in some parts, because Kuwait is a small country and so there are few issues that really affect Kuwait or many major players that care about it. Still, it made the simulation less rewarding for those of us who were Kuwait. I really had run out of domestic concerns to give the group that they could deal with by the second day so that left me with very little to do to deal with their boredom. I know in many ways that it because of news but it was a problem and it did make it a less rewarding experience overall.

Still, it is without a doubt something that I would do again. It was a rewarding and fun experience that gave a lot of power to those who participated. I tried to not force my will on the group, (though I probably failed there on the second day close to the end) so I did not get to experience that and did not spend large amounts of time trying to get my particular will. That is one thing that I do regret from having a Chair role. It forced me to hold back and not get to play as active of a role in the actual doing. I would like to have had a chance to actually be one of the people trying to push an agenda. If I were in the Model UN class-club for another semester I would have that chance. As is, I’ll get to do it a bit but as a Security Council member. Because of that I can’t speak on that element. Still it was worth it to be able to talk to others and help them to have an enjoyable experience with their first exploration of a Model UN simulation. I hope that we continue to do things like this because this has been one of the more interesting and meaningful parts of the class and gave us a chance to try and put some of what we had learned into actual practice.