During the program, 11 committees, representing nine countries and two non-state organizations, simulated diplomatic interactions and reacted to domestic and international challenges. This year, the conference focused on Latin America, with the upstart Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia wreaking havoc in the region by expanding their drug cartel and battling the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
“I see the mission of the conference as cultivating young leaders and helping them recognize the potential pitfalls and problems in governance,” said PICSim Mastermind Rahul Subramaniam ’11, who was responsible for devising potential crises and overseeing the progress of the program.
In just one of the three-hour sessions, a garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean hurt the fishing industries of several countries; the Argentinian peso collapsed, causing hyperinflation in the country; and Costa Rica dealt with a volcano eruption.
“We push things a little bit obviously ... no country is going to experience all these crises in such a short period of time,” Subramaniam said. “We try to create plausible steps leading to a war ... or to a financial crisis.”
Around 150 students participated as delegates in the conference from colleges across the world, including Duke University, Wesleyan University, University of Pennsylvania, National University of Singapore, Queens University in Canada and the University of Konstanz in Germany.
The “crisis room” itself was managed by approximately 100 Princeton students, who acted as liaisons between committees, oversaw the crises and streamed information every five to 10 minutes to PICSim’s Global News Report, a BBC-style website projected in all the committee rooms.
Although its basics resembled a Model U.N. conference, PICSim was unique in its emphasis on constantly evolving crises and open interaction between committees. At a typical Model U.N. conference, a crisis room representing the rest of the world is compartmentalized exclusively within each individual committee.
“The really unique thing about PICSim is that there are 11 committees that all interact with each other,” said Jeff Morell ’13, president of the International Relations Council, which organizes PICSim. “What we hope to achieve is that, by the end of the simulation, the crisis room should not have to do anything at all because the committees, acting of their own accord, are creating problems for each other.”
“In the real world, you respond to other people, not to a crisis room,” PICSim Chairman Samiul Karim ’13 said. “There is an unlimited number of directions that the conference can take.”
In the five years since its founding in 2006, PICSim, which is the only conference of its kind, has staged simulations of crises in the Balkans, the Middle East and Central Asia. With previous conferences, Morell noted, nuclear weapons negotiations often became too prominent, leading the organizers to instead focus this year on economic crises.
“We have seen the recent events in the Middle East, with economic troubles and political repression leading to revolts and revolutions,” Subramaniam said. “We are using some of those themes here but adapting them to a Latin American setting.”
Both visiting delegates and Princeton students said they enjoyed the conference.
“I think it’s gotten better, to be sure,” said Duke junior Arjun Khanna, who had also participated the two previous years. “The simulation is entertaining, for the most part realistic, fast-paced and very well-run.”
“You’re making exciting decisions with fake consequences,” Dhruv Shah ’14 said. “How cool would it be if you could just randomly have war with Honduras? ... But under all these problems, we’re actually making people aware of what the problems are.”
Subramaniam said the practical value of the conference came from pushing the delegates to their limits and requiring them to react to real-world situations.
“The U.S. military conducts these games all the time,” he said. “They call them war games. I see this as sort of a political game.”
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