On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, the class was separated into six groups where each group was assigned a country that they would represent. The goal was simply "security". Our group was country 1, which was the most economically powerful nation. We immediately made a peace treaty with the other massive nation (2) and several turns later joined an alliance between groups 2, 5, and 6. They intended to attack the small nation 4, which was separate from the rest of the nations. As soon as this was announced, the simulation was finished. Looking back, the entire class seemed to misunderstand the idea of security. Rather than ensuring that a conflict would not occur, it was interpreted as becoming the strongest nation. Because of this, there was an overall aggressive theme, consisting of powerful alliances, expansion of militaries, and stockpiling of economic units. In the end, country 4 was the target. However, if the simulation continued, it is very likely that the other smaller nations would also be taken out in order for the large nations to acquire more and more resources.
I think the whole class failed the simulation. Even group 4, which was not behaving aggressively, did not pass since they were unsuccessful in preserving the security of their nation. If it were done again, I think the simulation would play out differently. My guess is that the class would form one massive alliance and stockpile resources until the moderator would finally say "fine, you win".
I think the whole class failed the simulation. Even group 4, which was not behaving aggressively, did not pass since they were unsuccessful in preserving the security of their nation. If it were done again, I think the simulation would play out differently. My guess is that the class would form one massive alliance and stockpile resources until the moderator would finally say "fine, you win".
I think that what you said at the end would have been the best way to do it. If everyone had created an equal balance it would allow for all to be secure. However, even though Country 4 was not able to protect their own security, I don't think they could have done anything else. They made alliances with the other country, country 3, that was not involved with the others, in an attempt to make themselves more secure, but the other countries had already targeted them for no reason. So, the only thing they could have done was try to get apart of that mass alliance sooner so they were not the odd one out and the target.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I do agree that mass cooperation between all of the groups would have inevitably prevented conflict and allowed each country to achieve domestic security, I think that it would be nearly impossible to actually occur. As Mr. Stewart stated himself, we were somewhat set up for this type of conflict and inevitable violence, as he said that the only goal was for each country to try and help protect itself by the end, the most straight-forward way of doing so being weapons-stockpiling and creating alliances against other nations. Because we now know how we could have actually succeeded, obviously we would be able to somewhat "outsmart" the system to an extent through cooperation, however I think that this way of thinking undermines the actual purpose of the simulation, as Mr Stewart was trying to get us to compare how we tried to protect our own countries to the breakout of World War 1. So, overall, even though it might be clear after-the-fact how we could have correctly preserved the securities of our own nations by seeing how we had "misunderstood" how we were supposed to do this, I don't feel that this was necessarily a bad thing. Your insight makes it sound like it was our fault for resulting to such violence, and even though this is true to a certain extent, I think that we can attribute the development of this conflict to how it was set-up in such a competitive way, which inevitably caused countries to war with each other.
ReplyDeleteCountry 4 had no public alliances while every other country had at least one public alliance. Other countries don't want to attack a country that is backed by a huge amount of troops. But you then have to look on the other hand where if you have too many alliances you can be caught in the middle. If you have too many alliances you could get dragged into war more often and dragged into a war you never wanted to take part of. Another reason why you shouldn't have too many alliances is if two of your alliances start a war against each other you'd be caught in the middle of whose side to join.
ReplyDeleteCountry 4 had no public alliances while every other country had at least one public alliance. Other countries don't want to attack a country that is backed by a huge amount of troops. But you then have to look on the other hand where if you have too many alliances you can be caught in the middle. If you have too many alliances you could get dragged into war more often and dragged into a war you never wanted to take part of. Another reason why you shouldn't have too many alliances is if two of your alliances start a war against each other you'd be caught in the middle of whose side to join.
ReplyDelete