The way of Model United Nations

We were coming towards the end of a very long debate. We had been arguing, compromising, bullying and pleading for the previous day and the start of this morning. Finally it seemed as though we were actually getting a resolution passed. Tired smiles started to appear on the faces of delegates. Then there was stunned silence followed by a mixture of panic and anger, absolute bedlam. For this was the Model United Nations Security Council. Russia had just decided to move their status from being a sponsor of the resolution to being a signatory. Since sponsors cannot veto the resolution and signatories who have the power can at will, the drama in the room went up several notches. Private messages flowed to Russia, "why are you doing this?" "What does Russia want?" When the delegate saw the last one a small smile appeared across their face. I was the Russian delegate.

This is the weird and wonderful world of Model United Nations, a simulation of the real UN. Sometimes they are small events at the local club where the number of participants can vary between 5-15. The debates around issues are numerous and various including but not exclusively; Climate Change, drugs, HIV/AIDS, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, North Korea's nuclear programme, terrorism, China's sea territorial claims, trade barriers and social care among others.

Each session of MUN is different whether you are at a regular local club night or at an international conference. The issues change, therefore the Nation States central to the debates change. When you have your country the first thing you need to know is that you are there to speak your country's position on a given issue, not your own. This can be especially challenging when you are given a country that you are not very familiar with, and even more so if you have to represent a country whose position you find distasteful. However there is much fun to be had with the latter. There are the jokers in the pack, the Axis of Evil countries; Cuba, Syria, North Korea and Iran. With these countries you can pretty much get away with saying anything random and crazy, interspersed with rants against America or the Jews or both (depending on the country). But others are less outwardly unsavoury but still don’t see eye to eye with the Western countries; Russia and China. China especially tends to play its cards close to its chest.

While my game plan for a given debate often depends on the issue we are addressing, it also depends on which country I am and which others are present. Who are my friends? Who are my enemies? Who are the neutral ones who can be persuaded? Who are the ones who might try to annoyingly outfox you with a critique of one of your speeches, leaving you to resort to cutting them down to size until they submit? Forceful positions on certain issues often require a forceful approach in order to match your country's stance. Often you find yourself having to articulate points of view that you disagree with or find downright offensive.

You learn a lot about human psychology at MUN. If you are at a local group you can learn the different debating methods that various people bring to the table and how to manoeuvre around them. On the international debate the very confident (and arrogant) people stick out. These are the resolution writers and those that seem to be everywhere at once during the informal sessions. They are often the showmen who are expert at appearing reasonable when really they would shiv you in the spinal column if it was in their national interest. Things get very competitive very quickly. Too often the people who spend most of their times behind the laptops writing resolutions get awards, mercifully a trend that seems to be abating.

At the international conferences the size and power of the country's you represent generally increases with the number of conferences you get under your belt. I worked up from Togo, to Egypt, to Russia (Security Council) to Saudi Arabia (Environment Programme). The last two countries left we with that dilemma I mentioned before, representing a country whose position is very far from your own. So I pondered over the dilemma and came to the conclusion that the only way to represent them effectively, would be to do so with enthusiasm and a fair share of aggression. Take no prisoners, trample your enemies, pillage and burn down their villages and dance and urinate on their funeral pyres. And in the breaks of the debate get to know your opponents as yourself, just so they know you don’t live your life as some kind of Genghis Khan-like jerk (or just a straight jerk). You have to let people know it isn’t personal and you have to believe it too.

But then comes the central contradiction, if you are getting all heated up arguing a point then successes and failures feel more personal. As Russia on the Security Council I ended up in shouting matches with Morocco and Australia, leading to France and the US virtually dragging me outside to cool me down and have me state my terms for getting us out of the deadlock. Just the other day I tried to use my powers of persuasion to get poor countries to vote through an amendment which would compensate Saudi Arabia financially for cutting it's oil production. I was asking countries like Tuvalu, an island nation with a 3 story building as its highest building and a 15 member parliament, to get the international community to give money to my super rich kingdom ruled by a super rich royal family. But alas my powers of oratory were not enough and my amendment was voted down. I was furious! I smacked my pen on desk so hard it broke. It was then that I decided to have my revenge. I and my oil producing allies (most of them) helped me vote down every single amendment and the resolution itself. Nothing was passed to tackle the problem of rising sea levels. The debate closed. I was happy as Saudi Arabia, personally I felt very dirty.

I go to MUN conferences for the social and the debating element. Every conference I have been to I have felt more welcome there than many other clubs I went to during my time at UWE. But sadly it will all come to an end at some point. I still go now because I only live a short walk away from the university and my friends in the committee still welcome me along. But sooner or later I will leave the weird and wonderful city of Bristol and it's MUN club. It is a shame since I have improved immeasurably in my performance at MUN debates. My speaking has improved thanks to practice at MUN and the practice I get from the Public Speaking Society I still attend. At the end of international conferences it is a tradition that you pass your country's placard around for people to sign and put comments on. I was especially touched with the comments I received at the last conference. It seemed many of my fellow delegates were impressed with my performance, one of them even saying that they thought I should be the next Prime Minister! The latter was quite a compliment even though pretty much anyone I could hit a rock with could do a better job than the incumbent. I was pleased that my colleagues thought so highly of me, but to be honest I was disappointed that after all that I walked away empty handed awards wise. I say this knowing that some chairs at that debate may be reading this. I am not expecting them to pull an award out of their backside and it isn’t personal, but I reserve my right to say when I think they are wrong.  Now I have done so I can let the matter rest.  If you get to know me personally you will find that I am principally outspoken when I see something I believe to be unjust.

But either way my past experience has left me hungry for the next MUN adventure.  I shall not be denied a second time.  So watch out BATHMUN 2014, the Bristol barbarians are coming!

The State of the Union Part II: Political

In many ways my worldview is very similar to where it was in 2012. According to politicalcompass.org.uk I am a centre-left libertarian, almost smack on the dot of Mahatma Ghandi. I broadly agree with that assessment, although I am by my own admission not a pacifist. I believe violence is sometimes necessary to ensure one's self defence against bully's and as a last resort earn one's freedom. So my Mahatma Ghandi's stick would be either a sharp pointy or a Bo stick like Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.

I am pretty certain now that I am not a Liberal Democrat any more. My membership has expired and I have no plans to renew it. In many ways I have cause to feel sad about this. I enjoyed the weird and wonderful world of Lib Dem Party Conferences: the free goodies, free food, free booze, interesting stalls, wonderful people etc. But when it came down to it I didn’t feel right staying in a party just for the goodies. I don’t entirely subscribe to this Coalition "Stab in the back" myth. I understand that compromises have to be made. Granted, much of the Lib Dem co-operation with the cuts has happened with far too little protest from my old party. But by myself I have drifted away from the Lib Dems. My ideas about democratic reform have become more radical in particular. And generally I think the party is in danger of losing it's innovative and radical spark. That being said I am still strangely defensive of my party. I tire of this "they are all the same" faff because it is simply not true. I know many Lib Dems MPs and councillors who are very hard working and I wish them well.

At the moment I am fairly pessimistic about our country's short term political prospects. The initiative is with the hard right (not to be confused with the Far Right) and their standard-bearer United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). In times when the right are in power logic would dictate that support should flock mostly to the left as a protest vote. This however has not happened, which tells me that something is very wrong. The left should be getting a windfall but are losing out. This should ring alarm bells on the left side of the fence and encourage some soul searching.

I don’t have all the answers for why UKIP is getting the windfall. For the most part I can see five core causes: 1. Public opinion turning to support welfare cuts. 2. Media helpfulness towards UKIP. 3. UKIP profiting from public anger towards politicians and life in contemporary Britain. 4. Non-UKIP politicians mishandling the UKIP challenge. 5. The left failing to articulate an alternative vision loudly and convincingly enough.

The cuts to the welfare budget originally and rightfully earned the Coalition Government the British public's scorn. After banging on about so called 'scroungers', albeit in more diplomatic language, to the British public the government eventually managed to make public opinion turn. After looking at a few opinion polls on balance it seems a slim majority of the British public see the welfare cuts as necessary. This is news to the ears of the UKIP leadership who want the government to cut deeper into the welfare budget, using similar language about the issue as the Conservatives.

There is not a day that goes by that you don’t hear any news about UKIP, no matter how tenuous. It has almost become ridiculous how fixated the media are on the party, especially it's leader Nigel Farage. Some of this has been intentional, while other stories appear to have been accidental ones such as embarrassing remarks from UKIP councillors. But even the latter stories seem to work in UKIP's favour. As they say, it is better to be talked about than not talked about. I suspect that some of them, although perhaps not all are intentional leaks to keep the party in the mainstream dialogue. Godfrey Bloom, for all his vile opinions has not said anything that I have not heard on local newspaper Opinion pages, a sad sign of the times.

Then there is the British public's continuing resentment with the state of politics. I am guilty of more than a little cynicism about this trend. I know people personally from country's that are Communist, ruled by cliques who put on charades of democracy and those in almost total anarchy (Somalia). These cases seem to put our problems in perspective. To be sure I am not completely satisfied with all of our politician’s conduct (elected or unelected).  What concerns me however is this is unconstructive anger.  Anger seems to be directed towards more apathy or voting for UKIP.  Let the system burn or vote for a party with reheated Conservative policy leftovers.  This is where the left should be capitalising. 

 

The self professed main standard-bearer of the left, the Labour Party has been lacklustre in hitting back at the Coalition or UKIP lately. This due to the party giving into the same old cheap tactic of Opposition politics, saying everything the government is doing wrong without presenting any alternative ideas.  The Labour Party should ridiculing Prime Minister David Cameron as a weak leader for implementing policies against migrants, not coming up with their own variety.  The problem is no political party is daring to question the myths that UKIP is propagating against immigration.  No one has the guts to say that the last wave of Eastern Europe immigration gave us more public money than it took away, confounding the scare stories.  Simply put this has happened before.  The Labour Party adds fuel to the immigration fire by talking about immigrants depressing wages, yet they don’t talk about the problem of migrant qualifications being incompatible with jobs over here.  It is all show, no policy.

 

Policy rooted in evidence is what needed.  The British public are irritable and angry, they are susceptible to listening to scapegoats more than they are to being told they are wrong or have been misled.  But those are the facts on the ground.  UKIP are generating easy answers.  A bit of careful planning, some moral courage, good research and new innovative ideas are the answer to lancing the UKIP boil.

 

Some of my leftist friends have whispered in my ear about UKIP potentially splitting the rightist vote to our advantage.  While I see where they are coming from I think waiting on this could have some negative consequences.  A Tory/UKIP electoral pact for instance would be for the left a disaster.  Also it will distract us from the real problem which is making the left more palatable to the electorate.

 

Those on the left need to do many things.  We need to start talking about policy a little more than talking about principles, the latter of which the left are susceptible to rambling on about.  We need to prove through evidence why certain rightist policies are not working.  We need to start making ideas and weave them into a vision of Britain, to sink Cameron’s and to prove that UKIP has none (or none desirable).  I am working on some ideas myself, but I don’t have all the answers (sorry to disappoint).

The State of the Union I: Personal

From a personal perspective 2013 for me was year of achievement. At the start of the year I was enjoying my second term of my Masters course in International Development and Security at the University of Bristol. Bolstered by my unexpectedly very good essay results from the previous term I began this one with my head held high. My initial optimism was slightly dented at the start with a quick switch of modules. Long story short I didn’t think I could maintain my uni work/paid work balance with this module. It was a hard decision to make, especially since vocationally it may have opened up more pathways to me in the future. As a kind of karmic retribution for this quick change, I ended up with a fellow comrade having to cobble together a presentation about the foreign policy of Small Nation-States in a week. We pulled it off with lots of work mixed with charm and confidence. I initially felt bad since I seemed to be bossing him around to get the presentation together. But he gave me a bottle of wine for myself and my fiancée to say thanks for my work, so I guess I didn’t wear him down too much. I wish him well wherever he is now.

My favourite module was by far the Politics of Latin America. I won’t name my tutor since I don’t want to embarrass them. But take it from me, their charisma, their personality and their passion for the subject matter made the module hugely enjoyable. I always looked forward to the seminar on a friday morning. I find the region a fascinating one and would very much like to visit it again once my financial position improves. I have visited Cuba with my Mum and sister and would love to go back. If only to do Havana again, half of which I was prevented from seeing due to being stricken with food poisoning. Learning Spanish is on my to do list. Lord knows when I will actually have a chance to follow up on that.

The decision to change my module seems to have set a trend in myself making sudden decisions that have paid off. My decision to go on my Masters course in 2012 was much like that. The message was clear to me then, "something has to change", I thought. And so it has. In a delightful twist continuation of this trend, myself and my fiancée decided to become engaged last January. It was an unconventional proposal to say the least, suitable for a very unconventional couple such as us. We were watching the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode about the Incan mummy who comes alive and disguises herself as a foreign exchange student, surviving by sucking the life out of school boys who fancy her. "Do you want to get married?" She asked me. "Are you serious?" I asked, thinking I completely misheard her. She repeated the question. "Yes. Yes I do". And that was that. No ring, no going down on one knee. In truth I was pondering when the best time for a proposal would be, and how I was going to do it. In those few seconds all of those worries disappeared. All that was left was us smiling, looking forward to a similarly unconventional but very fun wedding day and future together. We decided that was how it should be and we went with it. Caution was cast aside and yet again it paid off.

The exit from student life and re-entry to working life was rough thanks to a sluggish jobs market in Bristol, interesting since our Chancellor is full of boasting about our apparently "strong" recovery. Yet again I was tagged and sent in to the crawlingly inefficient, severely demoralising and insane Jobseekers Allowance system. I could write a book (a large angry one to be delivered to IDS via brick through his window) about what is wrong with the system according to my personal experience, suffice it to say that the system is worse under the Coalition in my experience. Despite a few false starts I eventually ended up getting some Data Entry work for EE via an agency. The contract is ongoing. So now I am in the more beneficial position where I can claw my way out of debt to my relatives and look for a job related to my degree. A good position of advantage.

Acutely aware that I am not yet working in the field I want to be in I have occupied myself with various distractions. I have left uni, but very kindly I was welcomed back into the two uni clubs that I have spent most time in and got the most out of during my Masters; Public Speaking Society and Model United Nations Society (MUN). I particularly had fun with the latter this year. Long story short but basically the more international conference's you go to, the more powerful countries you can be in the future. I had been patient. At the first conference I was the not so mighty Togo. At the Bath conference of 2012 I was Egypt. Both debates involved P5 stitch ups. And so it was at Reading's 2013 conference I came in as the delegate for Russia on the Security Council, P fived and ready to go with my Russian flag button on my chest. The first topic was going to be Syria, when I heard this I knew it was going to be a lot of fun.

I am by my own admission socially awkward, making meeting new people sometimes haphazard with regards to first impressions. But as soon as I started talking to people at the conference, some of whom kindly approached me after recognising me from the last few conferences I felt like I belonged there. In the past I had joined groups where initially I met many people who would become friends for life (one of whom introduced me to my fiancée), but then stayed well past the time it became enjoyable, becoming the butt of jokes to certain shallow and vain people. I knew instantly this was a break with that unhappy past, not a return to it. I am very grateful to those who people who made me feel welcome, you know who you are. I hope to see you all again some time soon.

Anyway, enough of the self deprecating nonsense. The next day it was time for action! I listened to angry music as I walked to the campus, I couldn’t let my personal fondness for the delegates I had met before the night before get in the way of my country's hard line. The MUN Security Council convened. Straight away countries willing to join in my appetite for obstruction helped me as Russia vote down pretty much anything the opposition wanted to discuss, there was no real point in it, other than to make a statement and show that we weren’t going to make the day easy for them. My method was simple, demand something, get it, then ask for something else and threaten to Veto if I didn’t get what I wanted. For the most part it was an effective strategy for getting what I wanted. Not the easiest strategy for making friends though. But mercifully my colleagues away from the negotiating table did not take my antics personally.

Towards the end of the Reading MUN council things got a bit heated. The reasons were both personal and political. I knew that ambitious people wanted to get prizes at the end of the conference, and I knew that those who inevitably (and unfairly in my opinion) be those who wrote the resolution. I sensed that some slimy trickery was going on with the resolution, so I thundered to them at the session the next day that I sensed a "plot". It got pretty heated at one point. Voices were raised and I walked out with the P5 to cool off and lay out my terms. It turned out in the end that I was right to be suspicious. 3 traps were hidden in the resolution. I found 2 of them. Arguably what I voted through could conceivably have authorised force against my ally Bashar Al Assad. I congratulated the delegate who thought of that bit of trickery. After having said that, how many countries have completely ignored inconvenient parts of UN resolutions? Bloody lots is the answer, I am sure Russia would not behave any differently. I didn’t get any awards but two Russian's at the conference were so impressed by my performance that they asked to have their picture taken with me. I obliged my fans. The whole experience was exciting and confidence boosting. I knew I had people's attention when I sent ripples of panic through the Council, changing my status to the resolution from sponsor to signatory. After that many delegates eyed my like some sort of Darth Vader-like figure.

My political activities have also acted as a confidence to booster to me in what has turned out to be an eventful year. More of that will be addressed in my next post, Part II of my fairly pretentiously titled State of the Union. If there is an overall moral I have learnt for 2013 it is to be confident and seize opportunities. They are everywhere if you look for them. One of my near future opportunities to seize is to do a PHD. I am greatly looking forward to 2014. After years of settling for what I can make do with as oppose to what I want I know I am closer to getting the latter. Half the fun is the journey, not the destination itself.