Model UN Reaction

I think Model UN was a fun experience and gave me some insight into how world politics work that I can’t learn out of a textbook. The thing that I enjoyed the most would have to be the diplomatic meetings between two states. As the Minister of Defense, I was able to go on diplomatic meeting with Israel. Apparently, the media had spun a something an Israeli officer had said and made it look like Israel was prepping to attack Kuwait over misunderstanding about the reform we were making in our government. The face-to-face talk clarified some points and helped us build relations with Israel. We also laid some groundwork for a potential deal in which we might receive some kind of support in return for oil. Eventually, however, this plan didn’t work out, but it was fun to help bring our nations from the brink of war to potential economic partners.

Looking back, I think we were well prepared. We each had done extensive research on the Middle East in general, as well as the background and perspectives that Kuwait has in real life. This gave us all a general idea and put us all on the same page so that we could have meaningful discussions. I don’t feel like there was any point or event where we did not have some tangible evidence to back up where we were going and to justify our actions. I feel like as a group we really did a great job and the papers we had to do beforehand really helped us prepare for the Crisis Simulation.
As a group, I am most proud of how we handled the discovery of oil in the Persian Gulf. We as Kuwait decided that we should try to block Iran from claiming any oil. What we did was organize a meeting with the US and Iraq and signed a deal with Exxon to extract oil on our behalf, giving us substantial royalties. In the end, we as a group were able to gain the most for our tiny little country while blocking out the much more powerful Iran from gaining access to more oil. As one of our biggest threats, we could not allow them to gain additional wealth from the new oil that would only make them more of a threat. In a way, we practiced balance of power politics in order to form a regional alliance with Iraq and a partnership with the US to counteract the power and influence of Iran.

My only regret was that we were not able to get our friends in Syria to attack Israel. For fun, we had a deal with Syria that stated we would support them in a defensive war against Israel. Israeli soldiers went on a murderous rampage in the Golan Heights, and then sent in 20,000 troops into the region. We consider this Syrian land and hence an act of war against Syria. Had Syria fought back, we would have supported them, along with Iraq and Hezbollah.

In all, I thoroughly enjoyed the simulation and got a lot out of it. I had fun personally, and learned a lot by experiencing international politics firsthand. As a small nation, I feel like we made ourselves relevant and performed at a much greater level than was expected of us. I did regret not being able to fight back against Israeli aggression, but there is only so much we can do at once. I would definitely try it again.