'Risk' meets Model U.N.

The world is in turmoil. American lives are at stake. Nuclear material has disappeared at the Hungarian border, and the United States will double its peace-keeping police strength in the Balkans within the next 48 hours.

World crisis? No, just a little simulated diplomacy at play.

Students in professor Elaine Scully's HIS 380: The United States and World Affairs — From the Era of Imperialism to the Present, are participating in a worldwide online simulation game called Crisis 2000. The game is sponsored and coordinated by the Atlantic Council of the United States, a non-partisan political action group that works to promote global interdependence.

The exercise is a cross between the board game "Risk" and Model United Nations. Participants include students from France, Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic as well as American universities. Each group of students assumes the identity of a country for the duration of the simulation.

Princeton has been assigned the role of the United States, and the students in Scully's class have been divided into two groups — the orange and black teams — and are simultaneously playing two different versions of the game.

The game began with the eruption of a world crisis. Students were informed Monday that there have been reports of attacks on KFOR troops in several areas of Kosovo. They have until April 21 to resolve it.

To complicate the situation, there has supposedly been nuclear material seized on the Hungarian border in transit from Russia to Serbia. "This could be a hoax, though," said Chris Cox '01, acting president and secretary of state of the orange team. "Part of what we are learning with the game is trying to figure out which reports are correct and which reports are false."

The game is conducted online through the Atlantic Council Website, where countries can log on using a password and then post messages or conduct conferences with other countries.

Final decisions for each team are made by students who have assumed roles as the president, national security advisor, secretary of state, joint chiefs of staff and White House press secretary. The rest of the students serve as experts in certain geographic areas.

The students prepared for the game by writing a policy paper, declaring where their country stands on issues such as relations with NATO, the European Union, the former Yugoslavia, Cyprus and Russia.

Scully said the game is an important part of the course curriculum. "I want to give my students a chance to learn from history and be able to react to a crisis and to see how difficult it is to make decisions yourself," she said.

Different leadership techniques are already emerging among the participants. Cox said the orange and black teams are taking very different approaches to resolving the crisis. "Our team is resolving the crisis more smoothly than the black team. We are using Wilsonian principles and doing our best to approach a solution peacefully through conferences," he said.

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"It sounds like the black team is about to start World War III," Cox added. Instead of trying to resolve things peacefully, the black team immediately sent troops into the area. This decision prompted the game director to contact Scully just hours after the scenario began. "They called just to double-check that the black team was serious about its decision to send in troops," she said.

'Aggressive'

David Dempsey '01, the black team's president, defended his group's decision. "We agree that our stance is aggressive, but we feel it is not out of character for the United States," he said.

"We think that the Atlantic Council chair has a set agenda based on Wilsonian principles that, while idealistic, are too wishy-washy for our tastes," he added.

Even though the black team has taken a more aggressive stance, it, like the orange team, "looks forward to resolving this crisis expediently, peacefully, decisively," as disclosed in a statement released Wednesday by "Commander-in-Chief" Dempsey.