Patterson Crisis Simulation from the Chinese Perspective

By John W. Parks

This year’s Patterson School Spring Crisis Simulation was centered around concluding the war in Ukraine. Patterson students assumed the roles of diplomats from the European Union, the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Turkey, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and the United States. The simulation took place at Patterson Hall, but in the minds of students, the summit was held in Ankara over the course of two weeks with a goal of achieving peace in Ukraine. The Chinese delegation, in particular, took on this monumental task with a certain swagger only a team with power could assert.

The spring simulation was done a little differently than the fall Army War College ISCNE simulation. Each delegation was given a handbook of basic facts and history, up-to-date and relevant, to guide the direction of the summit. However, teams went through several adjudication rounds to write their own goals and their own redlines. Simulation Control, led by Dr. Robert Farley and Patterson alum Jackson Revere, would then approve or leak certain information to other teams as intelligence reports. The Chinese delegation decided early, based on past trends and intelligence reports from Simulation Control, that they would let the other teams come to them for help as they sought to ensure all countries could participate in a global economy in the post-war period.

Day one began with an intelligence report that Russia was causing discontent in North Korea, an obvious problem for the Chinese delegation. While other teams got to work on obtaining a ceasefire, China presented an arms deal for Russia to quell the North Korean problem. China also began a process of obtaining Turkey’s permission to navigate the Bosphorus Strait and expand the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) into the country. However, it did not take long before murmurs about the EU’s baby monitor espionage in Russia’s room, and BlueSky Social wars took over the simulation. By mid-afternoon, delegations were in full panic as Ukraine prepared to offer a ceasefire. This led to a disruption in everyone’s working relationships, including China’s. In-progress deals with Russia were put on hold while the Americans, Russians, and Ukrainians excluded China from the ceasefire conversation.

The following morning, delegations were shocked that a ceasefire was approved, but the terms caused the simulated Ukrainian citizens to revolt and protest. With temporary peace achieved, the Chinese spent a largely uneventful morning building relationships that would make China the primary partner for Ukraine’s reconstruction. Just as these goals were being met, and the Chinese delegation was comfortable, the summit in Ankara was bombed by an unknown group, killing the Ukrainian head of delegation and placing the American and Russian HODs in critical condition. Peace talks went on unresolved.

Being a member of the Chinese delegation posed its own challenges. Attempting to be friendly with all the delegations meant maintaining several projects at once. Things got difficult when our Russian ally pushed us away. It was also quite difficult to discern simulation identities from reality when emotions got carried away and shouting matches took place. However, the method in which the spring crisis was designed encouraged the creativity of teams in finding solutions to these problems. Key skills were developed when determining the most important issues to dedicate effort toward, all while communicating effectively with peers. In recollection, the Patterson Spring Crisis Simulation is an essential hands-on learning activity that students appreciate and will leverage into future careers inside or out of the diplomatic setting.