The 2025 Security Studies Simulation will tackle a series of challenging scenarios centered around the effects of global warming in the Arctic.
This all-day event at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center will bring together 60 participants, including MA in Global Security Studies students, selected faculty, alumni, practitioners, and private sector experts. Organized by Program Director Stephen Grenier, the exercise leverages Valens Games’ expertise as a company that combines storytelling, complex decision-making, and intricate world-building through war games and simulations.
Participants will be divided into teams representing different countries and will call on their critical-thinking and crisis management skills to arrive at foreign policy decisions under conditions of strategic and bureaucratic uncertainty. In addition, the simulation will provide mentoring and networking opportunities for Johns Hopkins’ students, including those from the School of Advanced International Studies and the Whiting School of Engineering.
“Simulation is a tool used frequently in business, government, and international relations to think through potential scenarios and to call on decision-making capabilities to problem solve complicated issues.” Grenier said. “In this specific simulation, participants will factor in the growing adverse effects of global warming to make decisions about a number of potential real-life scenarios that could bring with them huge geopolitical ramifications.”
Some of the event’s scenarios will have participants brainstorming solutions for a number of potential challenges. As the Arctic waters warm and sea lanes open, how will leaders handle the competition among countries who are able to move more quickly into the region to access natural resources, like oil, that are now untapped under the water? As maritime and air traffic increases, how does this impact the need for search and rescue missions? As shipping costs are reduced, how will leaders manage the desire of companies who seek to relocate to the area? Thinning sea ice will prompt dozens of other potential areas of concern that will be addressed in the simulation.
“Areas like the Arctic have not traditionally been a political battlefield, but increasingly, as climate changes and sea levels rise, a desire to claim the region’s now more accessible resources are becoming more prevalent,” Grenier said. “It is horrendous, and it is unfortunate that people are ignoring, and even denying, the effects of global warming. It is not just about political gains. We are all going to suffer, and the threat may be even higher than nuclear war because the damage from global warming may not be reversible. Millions of people will die from global warming. This simulation will give our students the ability to translate the theory that they learn in the classroom to a practical application that could contribute to a much larger and necessary conversation.”