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Major powers are active across all strategic domains—including space and cyberspace—and possess multiple tools of national power to realize their leadership’s core objectives. In turn, the present geopolitical competition among the United States, China, and Russia includes diplomatic, informational, military, and economic dimensions. As stated in Joint Doctrine Note 2-19, Strategy, military strategy requires employment of “the instruments of national power across a broad spectrum of competition and conflict in pursuit of objectives, in a transregional, all-domain, and multifunctional environment.”¹ Given this present and future reality, the education of contemporary strategists should include experiential learning opportunities where participants develop multipronged national strategies within a competitive exercise environment. This type of activity could provide a stimulating, hands-on educational experience that promotes critical thinking on how to balance competing national priorities while yielding important insights into how potential adversaries seek to do the same.

Simulated negotiations could provide this form of experiential learning to students of strategic studies at both undergraduate and graduate levels. This includes the professional military education/ joint professional military education (PME/JPME) community, where simulated negotiations could provide warfighters with classroom opportunities to gain key insights into the cost/benefit assessments of potential adversaries and to learn and practice the art of statecraft within a scenario modeled on the present competitive geopolitical environment.²

Within this article, we seek to directly respond to the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s May 2020 call to all PME/JPME institutions to better prepare warfighters to think strategically and collaborate effectively in this environment, including through the expanded use of games and facilitated scenarios within the classroom.³ To this end, we provide an example of a simulated major power negotiation in the form of trilateral nuclear arms control talks involving the United States, the People’s Republic of China, and the Russian Federation. This classroom exercise could be conducted in courses addressing major power competition, grand strategy (including the critical role of diplomacy), deterrence, arms control, and other related topics.

As discussed herein, simulated negotiations are a valuable tool for both educating warfighters and enhancing their interdisciplinary skill sets, particularly for officers preparing for assignments that involve developing strategies and plans to deter adversaries (and assure allies) and/or postings that require significant coordination with the U.S. Government interagency community or U.S. allies and partners. More important, simulated negotiations are a means to actively engage students, providing an opportunity to apply knowledge and gain experience within an atmosphere of friendly competition rather than asking them to passively receive information.

Leadership Guidance on Experiential Learning

In May 2020, the Joint Chiefs, recognizing that the joint force’s education and training initiatives must adapt to keep pace with a rapidly evolving security environment, published Developing Today’s Joint Officers for Tomorrow’s Ways of War: The Joint Chiefs of Staff Vision and Guidance for Professional Military Education and Talent Management. ⁴ This document identifies one of the desired PME/JPME endstates as officers whose education and training have developed them into “applied strategists” with the skills to assess complex environments and weigh various objectives and criteria in developing military strategies and advising commanders and civilian decisionmakers.⁵

While praising the past efforts of PME institutions to instruct and develop warfighters, the document emphasized that future educational initiatives need to shift from a “topic-based model to an outcomes-based approach.”⁶ Warfighters, it asserts, should not solely be taught facts. Rather, schools and professional education programs should equip warfighters to:

• think strategically

• collaborate across Services with other parts of government as well as with allies and partners

• be given opportunities to creatively adapt thinking and planning in response to complex, evolving challenges.

To this end, Developing Today’s Joint Officers includes recommendations for how PME institutions could adapt to better prepare current students for both contemporary and future security threats facing the United States and its allies. It directs Service and joint schools to “incorporate [more] active and experiential learning” into their curricula and classrooms.⁷ To ready students for “contemporary challenges, including war, deterrence, and measures short of armed conflict,” it recommends including activities such as games and facilitated scenarios: “Curricula should leverage live, virtual, constructive, and gaming methodologies with wargames and exercises involving multiple sets and repetitions to develop deeper insight and ingenuity.”⁸

Experiential learning is increasingly recognized as a valuable means of developing the intellectual and cognitive capacity of students while also granting them opportunities to put acquired knowledge to the test within a competitive environment.⁹ This type of hands-on educational experience allows many students to develop a keener appreciation of complex security challenges while boosting their capacity for problem-solving both as individuals and within groups or teams. When games or scenarios are coupled with classroom instruction, knowledge imparted to students is directly applied in a way many contemporary students find informative and engaging. This helps create a positive feedback loop where students conclude that what they are learning in the classroom will directly help them prepare for the real-world challenges of the future.

Why a Simulated Negotiation?

We suggest that a simulated multiparty nuclear arms control negotiation is a valuable tool for achieving key learning objectives for PME courses that focus on, or prominently feature, topics such as the present competition among the United States, China, and Russia; the development and implementation of national strategy; and strategies and plans for deterring China and Russia, including the current National Defense Strategy imperative to develop integrated deterrence approaches for these states and other potential adversaries.¹⁰

Major power negotiations on nuclear forces and other forms of strategic weaponry (however defined) represent high statecraft with high stakes. The outcome of these negotiations could likely impact the balance of power; regional security architectures and alliance systems; and international, regional, and national politics for years to come. While arms control talks are led by diplomats, a state’s negotiating position (and the relative strength or weakness of this position) is grounded in its current and projected future military capabilities. In turn, these capabilities are integral to a state’s overall defense posture and strategy and, critically, its assessment of its own ability to deter adversary aggression. Developing Today’s Joint Officers states that an ideal strategist must (among other things) “discern the military dimensions of a challenge affecting national interest, frame the issue at the policy level, and recommend viable military options.”¹¹

The ability to combine military strengths with diplomatic acumen to realize national and alliance objectives; maintain or gain competitive advantages; preserve the international rules-based order; and deploy, posture, and exercise military forces to deter war is vital to U.S. and allied security. A simulated majorpower nuclear arms control negotiation could serve as an effective exercise for PME students to think strategically and practice how to advise effectively against the backdrop of three major powers jockeying for influence (including two that are partly, but not fully, aligned against the third). As described in further detail below, we believe a simulated negotiation could realize several key PME learning objectives and also develop skills helping students succeed at future postings to the Pentagon, combatant commands, the interagency community, and any role involving liaison or combined planning activities with allies.

Overview of a Simulated Negotiation

PME continually faces the challenge of requests to teach students timeless principles of military strategy while concurrently ensuring courses and instruction are responsive to the exigencies of the moment. In recognition of the limited time available within many PME courses, we outline a three-part simulated negotiation that could be completed over the course of two class sessions.

We suggest assigning students to their respective delegations the week prior to the simulated negotiation, dividing the class into three teams representing the United States, China, and Russia. We recommend designating an “Ambassador” to lead each team. We further recommend providing each team with a list of readings giving insights into its assigned state’s national security strategy and perspective on the strategies of the other two major powers—for example, the China team could be assigned passages from the Department of Defense (DOD)’s annual report on Chinese military power.¹²

In addition, given the simulation’s focus on nuclear arms control, the instructor should provide additional context on each state’s nuclear forces as well as other relevant strategic capabilities that one or more sides may seek to include within negotiations (such as nonstrategic nuclear weapons or missile defense assets). We suggest using the following scenario, but these details could be adapted if there are specific areas of greater interest or value to specific courses or to reflect recent changes in a specific state’s force levels or posture.

Scenario. The year is 2030. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the last remaining arms control treaty placing limits on the “strategic” offensive nuclear arms of the United States and Russia, has expired in 2026 without replacement. (Per the treaty and previous U.S.-Russia agreements, strategic refers to nuclear-capable delivery systems with a range of 5,500-plus kilometers, including refueled bombers that can reach this range.)

China fields a “strategic” nuclear triad of long-range delivery systems. In addition (and in line with current public DOD assessments), China now has an arsenal of over 1,000 nuclear weapons.13 In the past, Beijing resisted engaging in major-power nuclear arms control talks, informing the United States that it would consider doing so in the future only if Washington and Moscow were at roughly equivalent force levels as China. Within this scenario, China has sufficiently built its nuclear forces to provide its leadership with the confidence to engage in talks as a peer major nuclear power.

The leaders of the three states have agreed to commence a trilateral round of arms control talks on “strategic nuclear forces” aimed at “achieving a stable nuclear deterrence balance.”

Each team would be provided with a general description of each state’s nuclear arsenals, strategic missile defenses, and hypersonic delivery systems.

To provide a common accounting system, the simulation uses the counting rules of New START, despite the treaty’s expiration. (The treaty assigns one nuclear weapon to each long-range nuclear-capable bomber, regardless of the aircraft’s loadout.) The United States remains at its New START limits of strategic offensive nuclear forces (700 deployed launchers, with 1,550 weapons assigned to these launchers); Russia retains its New START force but continues to pursue the “exotic” nuclear forces first outlined by President Vladimir Putin in 2018, only some of which it accepts as being included under the treaty’s construct (750 deployed launchers with 1,600 assigned weapons); and China now fields 520 deployed launchers with 1,100 weapons assigned to them.¹⁴

All three states are pursuing hypersonic delivery systems. The United States has stated it does not intend to equip these systems with nuclear weapons; Russia has stated these systems will have nuclear and nonnuclear roles; China has remained silent on the topic. Moreover, all three states field missile defenses intended to provide a limited defense against strategic nuclear attacks (only the U.S. system, however, is designed to cover the entire country). All three states possess “nonstrategic” nuclear weapons (Russia, about 2,000; the United States, about 500; China, about 100)—for example, nuclear bombs and warheads assigned to delivery systems that do not have intercontinental ranges.

Each delegation would also receive individual instructions regarding the scope of negotiations. The scope provides an important opportunity for the instructor to give tailored (and differing) priorities to each delegation. Given this, the following are illustrative and not intended to be comprehensive.

Scope. The U.S. delegation will seek to include all nuclear forces previously covered by New START and all Russian “exotic” nuclear delivery systems. It will also seek to include limits on nonstrategic nuclear weapons and nuclear-capable hypersonic delivery systems. It will seek to exclude missile defenses.

The Russian delegation seeks to include North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) nuclear forces within negotiations (that is, British and French nuclear forces). It also seeks to include several U.S. conventional strike systems, based on an argument that they are a part of any nuclear deterrence relationship between the two states because of Russian Ministry of Defense claims they could be used in a “preemptive” strike against Russian nuclear forces. The Russian and Chinese delegations seek to exclude “nonstrategic” nuclear weapons and nuclear-capable hypersonic delivery systems from talks but include missile defenses.

Further details could be provided at the discretion of the instructor, but this basic overview of the participating states’ respective nuclear arsenals and desired scope of negotiations should be included in each delegation’s read-ahead materials.

The goal of the classroom exercise is for all teams to reach agreement on a common agenda for the talks and for each team to present and debate an initial proposal on the numbers and types of forces that should be covered within a potential future nuclear arms control treaty. By design, this will be difficult to achieve. The Russian and Chinese delegations, for example, are likely to propose including missile defenses based on an argument that a stable nuclear deterrence balance requires limits to offensive and defensive forces. The U.S. delegation, per its instructions, will firmly oppose this. The differing interpretations of the scope of an agreement, its overall purpose, and how to understand a concept such as nuclear deterrence are a critical part of this exercise.

The first session could begin with a short lecture on the topic at hand, such as “Key Considerations for Tailoring Adversary Deterrence Strategies,” followed by an overview of the simulation’s schedule and the overall objectives of the exercise. The simulation could then begin. The structure is flexible (to accommodate the specific needs and objectives of each class), but we recommend the remaining one-and-a-half class sessions be divided into three phases: pre-negotiation, agenda-setting, and first negotiating round and opening proposals.

For the pre-negotiation phase, the instructor should inform all three teams they are not yet authorized to speak to the other two delegations. If possible, it would be ideal to have the teams go to separate locations (such as the library and other classrooms) for their initial internal deliberations. Depending on the size and makeup of the class, we recommend assigning some specific roles to students, though this should be done at the instructor’s discretion. For instance, we recommend that in addition to having an Ambassador to lead it, each team should have students who take on the respective roles of (at minimum) the delegation’slead military expert, diplomacy expert, and technical expert. This is critical for students to learn not only how to negotiate with external parties but also that negotiations must first happen internally between organizations that often have differing perspectives and sometimes competing objectives.

Thus, the first phase should focus on each delegation determining:

• its overall negotiation goals, including how it defines “strategic nuclear forces,” what arms it might seek to limit, and what limitations to its own forces it might seek to avoid

• its preferred negotiating agenda (that is, the scope and topics it wishes to discuss; the U.S. delegation, for example, might include “verifiable reductions of ‘nonstrategic’ nuclear weapons” as an agenda item)

• a short description of its negotiating position on each proposed item.

Each team would be tasked with capturing this information in a memorandum sent by the Ambassador to the instructor (the suspense could be close of business the day after the class session; the overall paper should be kept short, no more than three pages). In addition, the Ambassador (following “national leadership” instructions provided by the instructor) would direct his or her delegation to develop three specific arms limitation proposals before the next class meeting. Proposals should be kept brief, perhaps 300 words apiece, with the instructor copied on each. After a common negotiating agenda is established, the delegation would select one of these proposals to put forward in the first round of negotiations. The completion of the delegation’s preferred negotiating agenda and specific arms control proposals completes phase one of the simulation.

The second phase commences between classroom sessions. The instructor emails each Ambassador copies of the three proposed agendas, which are likely to significantly differ. The purpose of the second phase is to “talk about talks”—that is, to negotiate a common agenda. Each team would be asked to review these competing agendas and prepare its Ambassador with an opening statement that outlines the team’s preferred agenda, agrees or disagrees with items proposed by the other states, and/or offers a compromise (such as a delegation agreeing to discuss numerical limits to nonstrategic nuclear weapons, but not to their associated delivery systems). The instructor could also inform teams that, while formal negotiations would commence at the beginning of the next class session, they are allowed to contact their counterparts with questions for clarification and even engage in informal sidebar talks.

The “official” opening of phase two coincides with the next classroom meeting. Each Ambassador would be allotted time to present his or her delegation’s proposed agenda and address the agendas put forward by the other two states. Some time could also be allowed for an attempt to negotiate and reconcile differences; it is likely, however, that the preferred U.S. agenda would remain significantly different than those put forward by the Russian and Chinese teams. At this point, nearing midway through the class session, the instructor would call for a recess. The teams’ talks about talks would be stated as complete.

Following a brief break, the instructor could state that the delegations have reported back to their respective capitals, and, pursuant to leadership guidance, there is now an agreed-on agenda. Each team now has an opportunity to briefly review the agenda and decide which of its own proposals it would like to advance in the “first round” of substantive negotiations to follow.

The back half of the class session is then devoted to these negotiations, which represent the third phase of the simulation. Each side briefly presents a single nuclear arms limitation proposal, with the session’s remaining time devoted to open negotiation among the three delegations. At the conclusion of class, each team would be tasked with writing a “cable” back to its capital summarizing its assessment of what occurred, the other teams’ responses to its proposal, and its reaction to the other delegations’ proposals. As with other items related to this simulation, this should be a short document. Depending on the course, instructors may also consider turning this cable into a more formal class writing assignment.

The above outline could be readily modified, particularly if more class time for a simulation is available. Instructors could also decide on whether learning outcomes could be advanced by altering the “leadership guidance” provided to delegations. One or more delegations, for example, could be directed to press for some type of interim agreement and be empowered to offer some incentive or concession to achieve this objective.

Developing Strategists Through Simulated Negotiations

Simulated major-power arms control negotiations allow JPME students the opportunity to directly address a range of challenging questions about geopolitical competition, strategic imperatives, and the use of diplomacy—whether conducted behind closed doors or using a megaphone—to communicate signals, compete (and sometimes cooperate) below the level of armed conflict, and attempt to advance national objectives. We believe simulated negotiations could provide numerous benefits to PME courses aimed at developing the knowledge and skill sets of contemporary strategists, and we highlight three relevant areas.

Improved Comprehension of the Dynamics of Major Power Competition. A key reason to include simulated negotiation exercises in PME classrooms is that today’s geopolitical environment is evolving and complex. With a renewed emphasis on major power competition in U.S. doctrine and strategy, warfighters must think through how to engage two potential adversaries that are semialigned.

This prospect brings challenges that were not present either during the Cold War or the years following the 9/11 attacks. How should the United States best signal its intentions to two adversaries simultaneously? Is there a way to find common ground in shared security challenges with China and Russia? What insights could be gained that are directly relevant for U.S.-NATO/ European and Indo-Pacific alliances?

A simulated negotiation among the United States, China, and Russia where students are asked to represent a delegation from one of the major powers provides a useful exercise for better understanding the complex relationships among these states. For example, it could provide participants with a demonstration of the challenges (but perhaps also vulnerabilities) of China and Russia’s significant but incomplete and imbalanced alignment. Participants are likely to experience and observe the Russian and Chinese delegations agreeing to work together to attempt to expand the scope of talks to place limits on U.S. nuclear forces, missile defenses, and possibly some conventional systems, due to their insistence that all these forces could affect the stability (or lack thereof) of nuclear deterrence among major powers. But it is also possible—particularly given increasing Russian dependence on China as a result of Russia’s poor performance in its unjust war against Ukraine—that students could have an opportunity to observe and understand that alignment does not equate to a full or equal partnership between Beijing and Moscow.

A simulated major power negotiation is also valuable for improving comprehension of the opportunities afforded by the success, and the perils of failure, of major power diplomacy. Successful negotiations could lead otherwise competitive major powers to work together to reduce common security risks. The United States and Russia have a long, complicated, and not always happy history of nuclear arms control negotiations, and Moscow directly violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and recently “suspended” its implementation of New START. At the same time, the dyad’s successful conclusion of several agreements on nuclear arms limitations, arms reductions, and risk-reduction measures stabilized important dimensions of their bilateral competition and was central to both sides significantly reducing their massive Cold War arsenals. Prior to the initiation of the 2018 U.S.-China “trade war” and the COVID-19 pandemic, Washington and Beijing reached agreements—though far more limited than the U.S.-Russia ones— that led to direct cooperation between U.S. and Chinese scientists to reduce nuclear proliferation risks.¹⁵

But history is also replete with examples of major powers fumbling opportunities to reduce tensions or prevent future conflicts at the negotiating table. One of the most infamous negotiation failures is the August 1939 talks among the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France to attempt to negotiate an alliance to deter German aggression. The parties walked away without an agreement, with grave consequences. This failure of major power diplomacy is not an isolated incident. From 1815 to 1945, over 40 percent of alliance treaty negotiations that involved European states ended without an agreement.16 Major power diplomacy is difficult work. Trust is an intangible asset that is hard won and easily lost, and rival states often find it difficult to negotiate mutually acceptable compromises on arms control measures even when there is a shared understanding of the risks and costs of arms racing. A simulated majorpower arms control negotiation could highlight these tensions for participants, with each team closely scrutinizing the others’ proposals to determine whether and how these states seek to establish or confirm an overall strategic advantage.

In addition, a simulated major power negotiation focused on a particular strategic domain or capability—such as nuclear-capable forces—could provide players with a better understanding of how these states assess the costs and benefits of specific nuclear, conventional, or dual-capable military capabilities. Russian failures to effectively counter U.S. and European precision weaponry provided to Ukraine, for example, may help the participants assigned to the Russia delegation better contextualize why the Kremlin would likely attempt to include U.S. advanced conventional delivery systems and weapons within a future nuclear arms control agreement. (In response, the U.S. team will likely follow the lead of previous U.S. negotiators in categorically rejecting their inclusion in any form of nuclear arms control negotiations.) This example highlights the important fact that “strategic” capabilities are defined and understood differently in different capitals, which might become readily apparent and acutely understood within the context of a mock negotiation.

Understanding the Crafting and Communication of National Strategy. A simulated multiparty negotiation could also help realize key learning objectives associated with developing and communicating national strategic imperatives. This type of scenario affords the opportunity to experience the challenges and tensions associated with strategy development and promulgation for the United States and its major geopolitical competitors, including internal deliberations and calculations regarding assessed costs and benefits of different courses of action.

In preparing for simulated arms control talks, each delegation must consider how to bring together various elements of national power to give their diplomats leverage at the negotiating table. A delegation’s deliberations, for example, should factor in questions of not only how to realize a balance of forces (or cleverly achieve overmatch) but also what impact limitations on forces and/or the ability to operate in strategic domains could have on their defense industrial base and on the political-military relationship with key allies. As a result, participants should gain a better understanding of how to incorporate different elements of national power into a negotiating strategy and the importance of working closely with interagency colleagues to achieve this objective. This could realize a key goal articulated within Developing Today’s Joint Officers, which states that PME must “infuse joint context” across an officer’s career, stressing the importance of developing an awareness that all military activities occur within a “broader joint context that includes the interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational arena.”¹⁷

In addition, the present information age rewards (or punishes) states for their ability to communicate to national and international publics, press, and commentators and respond rapidly and nimbly to efforts to mischaracterize or attack their positions and policies. The Joint Chiefs of Staff also direct PME institutions to prepare their students to become effective “written, verbal, and visual” communicators on all matters of strategy and operations. A mock negotiation offers students a chance to practice these skills on a simulated international stage, whether they are preparing their “Ambassador” with talking points or taking the dais themselves as the official, public representative of their “state.” Moreover, delegations could be encouraged to be creative in making their respective cases, perhaps by exercising their visual communication skills. (A memorable example: U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations [UN] Adlai Stevenson’s presentation of photographic evidence of Soviet missiles in Cuba to the UN Security Council in October 1962.¹⁸)

Furthermore, once talks are under way, students would directly engage with the negotiating positions and strategies of other teams. Both in the classroom and on later reflection on their experience of the push and pull of negotiations among rivals, students could assess how these states develop their own national strategies to get ahead within a competitive international environment and seek to use diplomacy to achieve strategic objectives.

Developing Integrated Deterrence Strategies. The learning objectives also dovetail with the present imperative to develop integrated deterrence strategies to address contemporary security threats to the United States and its allies. As Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin describes it: “Under what I call integrated deterrence, the U.S. military isn’t meant to stand apart, but to buttress U.S. diplomacy and advance a foreign policy that employs all instruments of our national power.”¹⁹ Simulated negotiations provide important practice for attempting to realize this type of integration.

Effective integrated deterrence strategies must focus on questions regarding the values, priorities, and decisionmaking dynamics of potential adversaries. As the objective of a deterrent strategy is to decisively influence the internal cost/benefit calculus of foreign decisionmakers, promulgating an effective strategy requires a close assessment of what these individuals value, what they seek to achieve, and what they are unwilling to risk.

A simulated negotiation provides multiple avenues for developing a better understanding of these internal dynamics. For the U.S. team, attempting to identify potential trade-offs and engaging in bartering provide for direct engagement with questions of what a potential adversary state values highly (as well as what types of outcomes it will seek to avoid). Similarly, in preparing to enter arms control negotiations that may impact military operations within a strategic domain or place some form of limits on certain military capabilities, a student team assigned to represent a foreign state would need to carefully consider which of its own military capabilities it considers most vital to its own security and which U.S. capabilities it considers most concerning. This pre-negotiation assessment could realize important learning objectives by educating students on adversary national priorities. The crucible of negotiations could then provide further insights into their potential cost/benefit calculus by forcing real-time assessments of what military capabilities are most valued and/or what prospective outcomes (in terms of limits on numbers or constraints on operations of forces and supporting elements, etc.) they are most determined to avoid.

Secretary Austin has also stated that effective integrated deterrence strategies require the close integration of all tools of national power across the U.S. Government interagency community to achieve this objective.²⁰ As noted, a simulated negotiation could serve as a useful exercise in helping PME students better understand and appreciate how to do this, highlighting the importance of bringing together different types of expertise to best prepare national decisionmakers for major power arms control talks.

DOD leadership has also stressed the fundamental importance of better integrating allied military and diplomatic strategies with those of the United States to forge an effective deterrence posture against current and future threats. While the simulated negotiation proposed here does not include any allied players per se, the concerns of U.S. allies would be an unstated but critical element of the talks. For the U.S. delegation, any consideration of nuclear arms control proposals should consider how limits on U.S. forces could affect allied security (the team should push back, for example, against any efforts by the Russian delegation to remove U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe, which would fundamentally weaken the central role these weapons play in providing a “nuclear umbrella” over NATO states). The Russian and Chinese teams are likely to put forward proposals they believe would constrain or weaken U.S.-led regional security arrangements they view as expressly designed to contain them. These competing motivations and how they manifest themselves during talks could serve as an important way for students to learn about how closely allied security is tied to the United States and to certain U.S. military capabilities.

Conclusion

Simulated major-power arms control negotiations are a valuable tool for educating tomorrow’s strategists. These simulations give PME students the opportunity to be creative in their thinking and planning, to incorporate other tools of national power and/or allies’ concerns into notional negotiating positions, and to develop better understandings of what may (or may not) deter a potential adversary. This is in direct response to the Joint Chiefs’ call for incorporating more active and experiential learning into the classroom.

The benefits of experiential learning are multifaceted. Students take a hands-on approach to problem-solving; learn to negotiate across teams and to navigate different departmental objectives within teams; gain critical thinking skills; learn when to prioritize and when to compromise; and gain a keener appreciation for the complexity of security challenges.

Although one exercise is discussed here, instructors should feel empowered to use simulations addressing a range of topics. For instance, a simulated Great Power negotiation might address access to outer space, or an instructor could change the players and focus on issues of regional security dynamics. We firmly believe that simulated negotiations could be crafted to fit multiple requirements without placing major burdens on instructors, while providing great benefit to our warfighter students. JFQ