Simulating the US National Security Interagency Process: Solid Foundations and a Method of Assessment

Abstract

An active learning approach to the study of US national security decision making decision making can be achieved through the use of an in-class role-playing simulation. This article considers the importance of solid foundations for simulation design: (1) simulation preparation should be linked to class materials and learning outcomes, but also stand on its own; and (2) success in mirroring reality requires a careful, even rigid, simulation structure. This article also provides a methodology for assessing the simulation’s impact on two separate issues: (1) student knowledge of the national security interagency process (based on a knowledge quiz given three times during the semester); and (2) student perception of the difficulty of making of national security decisions (based on a questionnaire given three times during the semester). Students were assigned roles within the national security bureaucracy, and presented with a challenge—the possibility of large-scale Iranian intervention in the Syrian Civil War. The assessment of student knowledge is still a work in process, complicated by logistical factors. The assessment of student perceptions of difficulty of decision making, however, yielded interesting preliminary results that should be replicated to make any conclusions more robust: Students began the course with a perception that national security decision making is highly complicated and difficult. Following lectures and readings, the perception of difficulty decreased significantly. However, the simulation increased student perception of decision making difficulty close to its original level. These results suggest that simulations are important for capturing complexities within decision making that lectures alone cannot.

Keywords:

• Active learning
• assessment
• simulation
• national security
• decision making

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the students from POLI 369 US National Security for teaching us about learning.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 On the types of simulations that might be used inside and outside a classroom, see Taylor (2013).

2 Our university did not require us to submit this study for IRB review due to three factors: the quizzes were part of the exams for the course; the questionnaire surveyed students only about their perception of issues related to the course material; and only aggregate data was included in the study—no individual data was used for this article.

3 On the issue of how much information students require before they can begin to move toward higher-order thinking, see Agarwal (2019).

4 Learning outcomes for simulations of foreign and national security policy making that we have used to develop and reshape our own are found in Langfield (2016, 409–410), Butcher (2012, 178), and Preston (2000, 113).

5 For a compilation of presidential reviews/studies and directives see Presidential Directives and Executive Order, Federation of American Scientists, https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/direct.htm.

6 The paper assignment for the large simulation (50 students) is available at http://www.people.vcu.edu/∼wnewmann/369%20Paper%20Instructions%20Spring%202017.htm.

7 The full PRD is available at http://www.people.vcu.edu/∼wnewmann/POLI%20369%20PRD%2037%20Spring%202017.htm.

8 Since an executive summary is a new type of writing for almost everyone in the class, students are asked to turn in a rough draft (at about week seven). No grade is given on this draft. Student grades on the final paper will depend on how well they respond to the comments on the rough draft. Final drafts are due about two to three weeks after the rough drafts are returned. Students are required to submit the rough draft, with comments on it, along with the final draft. Though working with a two-page limit (under threat of a “D” if the paper is one word over two pages) is difficult, the students generally have the most difficulty with citations.

9 A full list of roles for a class of 50 students is available at http://www.people.vcu.edu/∼wnewmann/369%20Simulation%20Roles%20Spring%202017.htm.

10 Stapleton uses three knowledge surveys—first day, midterm, and after the final class—to determine the changes in the students “level of confidence” in their knowledge of a given subject before and after class lectures/readings and the simulation (2020, 416–419).

11 For method of assessment that used control groups see Raymond (2010) and Toomey, Zhou, and Yan (2020).

12 The summer 2019 class was intended to be a first run of a simulation and assessment that would be repeated at least once every year. Due to the COVID-19 crisis classes have been moved online during 2020 and 2021 making it impossible to run an in-class simulation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

William W. Newmann

William W. Newmann, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Political Science Department and an affiliate faculty member of the Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has published Managing National Security Policy: The President and the Process (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003) as well as articles on national security, homeland security, East Asia, and the US Presidency in Presidential Studies Quarterly, Public Administration Review, Strategic Studies Quarterly, and the American Review of Public Administration. His most recent work is a book on presidential decision making in foreign policy toward China during the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations, tentatively entitled Isolation and Engagement. It was published by University of Michigan Press in July 2022. He received his Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs of the University of Pittsburgh. His website with a full CV is www.people.vcu.edu/∼wnewmann.

William T. Christiansen

William T. Christiansen, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of political science with a focus on international relations. Before joining Mount St. Mary’s, he worked as a full-time instructor in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Political Science Department while completing his dissertation at the University of South Carolina’s Department of Political Science. In addition to teaching at VCU, he taught international relations and comparative politics classes at the University of South Carolina from 2013 to 2019. Christiansen’s dissertation, International Conflict, Political Leaders, and Accountability, researches how leaders are evaluated for their actions during international conflicts and the biographical determinants of a political leader’s lethality in international disputes. A paper from another project, “Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Local Origin of Democracy Promotion,” was recently published in the journal “International Interactions.” His methodological approach involves the use of experiments and computational statistics to generate inferences about the behavior of political leaders and audiences. Before working toward his doctorate at South Carolina, Christiansen earned a B.A. in philosophy and a B.A./M.A. in political science at Virginia Tech. His website is available here: https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/williamchristiansen.