I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to participate in the SENSE simulation (Strategic Economic Needs and Security Exercise) at the U.S. Institute of Peace over the last three days. SENSE is a simulation exercise meant to train leaders in reconstruction in a post-conflict country, in this case the made-up country of Akrona. Originally created to help implement the Dayton Peace Accords, it has been updated since then and used to train Iraqi leaders, among other places. The values of experiential learning are immeasurable, and in the Congressional Fellowship Program here at PSA, we have the Fellows participate in a two-hour NSC Deputies Committee simulation exercise.

The SENSE simulation is unique in the breadth of stakeholders included in the scenario. I played a parliamentarian (one of six), but there was also a president with a cabinet of ministers covering all the major governance areas, a central bank, international donors, international and local NGO’s, private domestic firms and a multi-national corporation.

SENSE is also unique in that it uses computers to process the decisions of these many actors to constantly update the status of Akrona. Depending on your role, you are able to update certain elements of the simulation based on the decisions you make, and you can track the decisions made by other players. For instance, while I was sitting at a parliament computer yesterday, I was quite pleased to see the Minister of Finance cut spending in the civil budget and start paying down the national debt.

You do learn about dryer things like the elements of GDP, the interplay between the central bank’s discount rate, the import tariff rate, and the national debt. But the simulation excels at teaching what cannot be learned in a book, and I came away from the simulation with a new appreciation of the human factors of reconstruction. As a parliamentarian who controlled the pace at which sectors of the economy were privatized, the corporate tax rate, import and export tariffs, and the overall budget allocation to defense and civilian spending, there were constant requests made of me. Either government ministers were asking me to privatize the telecommunications sector, or a domestic firm was asking me to lower corporate taxes and raise import tariffs on agriculture, or the Ministry of Defense was pushing me to raise the portion of the budget spent on defense. Through all this haze, I was trying to figure out what was the right policy for the country and for my ethnic group (the Akroni), and I soon realized that any decision I made might make one or two groups happy, and make everyone else angry and think I was incompetent. When adding that psychological element into the chaotic and fast-paced environment we were faced with, I came to a new appreciation of what post-conflict governments face.

There is no easy solution, there is no solution that makes everyone happy, and there is rarely a “right” policy or solution. It’s a series of tradeoffs and compromises and reactions to unfolding events. And morale flags. Feeling that you have no power to effect the change you want is demoralizing, as is realizing that you are losing battles that you think are important. On the flip side, seeing your goals achieved is an exhilarating feeling. These human elements affect how the different stakeholders interact, and getting stuff done relies so much more on that than one might expect without having done the simulation. I highly recommend this experience to anyone who can participate, and I also look forward to continuing the NSC simulations with the PSA Congressional Fellows.

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