For Jayaram Ravi, saving the world from potential nuclear war came with small thanks indeed.
One moment, he was negotiating an end to a seething confrontation between China—his country—and the United States after their naval vessels collided in contested waters in the South China Sea. The next, he was being recalled to Beijing to answer to a Chinese president who was irate that peace had been won at far too high a price for a public now rioting in the streets.
None of it was real, of course. Ravi, a sophomore with hopes of joining the foreign service, was one of more than 100 Stanford students taking part in a two-day crisis simulation at the core of PS 114S: International Security in a Changing World.
But it was realistic, says Amy Zegart, MA ’93, PhD ’96, co-director of the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation, who taught the class and led the latest simulation, a tradition for nearly two decades.
Such simulations, she says, excel at putting students inside the constraints of foreign interests that may be nothing like America’s—and at evoking the fast-evolving, pressure-packed nature of an international crisis.
It’s not so easy to stay noncommittal, for example, while a “reporter,” played by a real veteran of the New York Times, prods you on whether you’ll honor your treaty commitments to defend the United States—as the Japanese and South Korean delegations found out.
“I can imagine world leaders sleeping very little during these times,” says sophomore Katherine Irajpanah, head of the U.S. delegation. “I slept very little.”
The premise of the crisis: Following the collision, China has seized 25 American crewmembers despite U.S. protestations that the ship was in international waters. As tensions soar, an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council convenes.
Not all the students get star billing. When grad student Ash Lubecke, an active-duty captain in the U.S. Army, was named to head the Brunei delegation, he admits he was soon online looking to learn the basics, including that the tiny nation has fewer than a half-million people. But the delegation capitalized on its minnow status, winning leverage, prestige and trade by selling itself as a neutral party more valuable as a go-between than as a partisan, Lubecke says.
Jayaram Ravi (Photo: Courtesy Katherine Irajpanah)Adding a dose of gravitas were heavyweight speakers such as former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Nick Burns and former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell. Student delegations answered to heads of state played by professors and fellows. And that’s where Ravi got into trouble.
With international opinion turning against China, he crafted a nine-point deal that would return the American crew—with regrets but no public apology from the Americans—in exchange for an agreement that basically booted the U.S. military out of the South China Sea for 120 days, a valuable concession from the Americans, he says.
That’s not how Zegart, as Chinese President Xi Jinping, saw it. With the Chinese public enraged at the loss of face, Zegart fired Ravi, a fate that initially stung but soon reinforced how domestic and international concerns can’t be separated.
For China, as worried about internal threats as external ones, humiliation in the international area can lead to regime change, he says. If there are riots in the streets, someone has to pay. “Since the deal with the United States was already made and could not be renegotiated, my removal was treated as the alternative solution.” How diplomatic.
