Surprise, surprise. I managed to get myself signed up for another MUN tournament last week, representing – cue drumroll – the fine country of France. This one was a bit different, involving only college students and taking place in Rennes. I was once again in the security council although a major difference was that the entire conference was focused on a fictional crisis rather than general topics: the Israeli prime minister declares that Iran has nuclear bombs. Cue international scandal, media circus, covert nuke-destroying operations, CIA misconduct, bombardments from the Gaza Strip, and destroyed Chinese supertankers. In other words, a major political mess.
It was quite fun, actually. Unlike the last conference, I wasn’t the penholder on any of the resolutions because most other delegates already had extensive experience. Unfortunately, since these were all University students, shenanigans were far less prevalent. No one changed their country to Middle Earth or stole Norway’s placard, although we had a fun time accusing Iran of everything. Really, just everything, including sourcing foreign scientists to work on their nuclear program, as proved by a handy little intelligence report furnished by the UK, the efficacy of which was commented upon by the delegate from Lithuania.
“I have to congratulate MI6 on their efficiency. Really, well done. Good work. In French, we would say it was bon. James Bon.”
Our most major problem was that every time we got something on the table the chair would pass around another press release telling us that Israel had just attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities or that protesters in Jordan had burned down the Israeli embassy, meaning that whatever we already had on the table was essentially useless.
So, well, the outcome was not entirely unpredictable.
Unlike at ILYMUN, where we fought but all came together in the end in a kind of One World Compromise, SPRIMUN was more realistic. Brutally so. We got a resolution on the table, called voting by roll call, and everything seemed to be going smoothly until your very own delegate passed, meaning I reserved the right to vote until everyone else had done so. We got around to Russia, who vetoed. The US also vetoed, effectively killing the entire resolution in the water. Just for good measure, I vetoed too – the resolution was against French foreign policy anyway. China and the UK, both originally “yes”, changed their votes to abstentions, meaning that none of the P5 supported the resolution and that if we had been real diplomats the world probably would have defaulted to nuclear war at that point. I can see now why no one trusts our generation.
suite bergamasque 