The International Relations Fellows of Norfolk Academy’s Center for Civic and Global Leadership explored global crisis strategy during a two-day seminar.
The second annual DIME Seminar focused on the four elements of national power—Diplomacy/Development, Information/Intelligence, Military, and Economics. Each International Relations Fellow was assigned a position to role play during a mock foreign policy crisis: The leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, had been assassinated. How should the United States react?
To prepare for their roles as advisors to the U.S. President, Fellows heard from a panel of experts:
- Tom Baltazar, retired U.S. Army Civil Affairs officer with extensive experience within the U.S. Agency for International Development
- Bryan Kurtz, expert on international development and “expeditionary economics”
- Dave Maxwell, retired U.S. Army Green Beret who now teaches at Georgetown University
- Lindsay Moran, former clandestine officer of the Central Intelligence Agency
- Susan Zelle, retired senior diplomat
The students and their parents attended a dinner and heard a keynote speech from Howard H. Hoege III, founder of 3H3 Leadership and a lecturer at University of Virginia’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. The keynote speech was entitled, “Judgement and Empathy: Bridging the Gap Between Historical Knowledge and Tomorrow’s Reality”.
On the second day, students met in the SEAL Heritage Center at Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek to tackle the second stage of their task—designing national strategy options to present to the POTUS (President of the United States), performed by Norfolk Academy parent Amy Bernert. Students had to adapt their plans to respond to evolving conditions within North Korea before the 2 p.m. meeting deadline. After several trial runs and perhaps a few nerves, the students presented their ideas to President Bernert. The simulation concluded with a “hot wash” (discussion of lessons learned).
