I'm one of the founders as well as the Project Manager and Lead Writer of CENEX 2011, which is the Josef Korbel School of International Studies' first multi-team, communications-linked crisis diplomacy simulation featuring a Control team sourced from inside and outside the Josef Korbel School.  CENEX is happening this year on May 7th, 2011 at Ben Cherrington Hall on the University of Denver campus.

What is CENEX? CENEX, which stands for Crisis Exchange Negotiation Exercise is a political-military simulation featuring different teams acting as states in an unfolding, future-based crisis diplomacy scenario.  The CENEX scenario this year is based on a crisis erupting in the Taiwan Strait involving teams from the United States, the Republic of Korea (South Korea), the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), Japan, the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People's Republic of China (China).

2011 is the birth year of CENEX.  Prior to the creation of this exercise, student organizations at the school ran small simulations which generally featured exercises build on scenarios involving disaster relief or humanitarian emergencies.  Many students at the Josef Korbel School felt that the development of a large-scale crisis diplomacy scenario would aid our professional understanding of what goes into managing a diplomatic crisis from the state perspective.  Earlier this year we got together and began mapping out how we would plan a large-scale simulation which would provide a great learning experience from the participants as well as mirroring the actual workings of a state during a crisis diplomacy scenario.

Myself, Leah Hapner (International Security '11), Clarissa David (International Security '11) and Amelia Jeep (International Studies '11), along with a number of other students assisting, began an intensive process of not only planning the logistics of the scenario (which are complex) but also the background document for the scenario (this sets the stage before the players actually arrive on the day of the simulation) as well as two moves - which we call Move I and Move II.

Simulations normally play in rounds of two to three hours.  What unfolds is that everyone gathers around and a "Move" is announced.  A move is a set of actions written by myself or one of the other founders of the game, which provides a framework that advances off the strategic background document.  I am responsible for writing the background document and Move I, Amelia Jeep is responsible for writing Move II.

So much goes into creating a realistic and fast-moving simulation that it's hard to explain all of it at once.  Writing a reality-based yet future-set scenario is far more difficult than it sounds.  Then there are the rules and FAQs to be written, teams formed, procedures mapped out, communications systems created, tested and tested again, administration and faculty buy-in to work on and a strong Control team recruited.

A strong, knowledgeable Control team is crucial to the success of any simulation.  Without a Control team you basically have the equivalent of a backyard BBQ - people sitting around talking about "what if."  The difference with a simulation like CENEX is that all decisions go through Control, which then decides the validity of the decision (whether it could realistically occur given the state's historical and operational capability) and the consequences of the action.  Our Control team is composed of military and civilian members from the Josef Korbel School, the United States Air Force Academy and the U.S. State Department.  The creation of a fast-acting and flexible Control team is critical to the success of CENEX.

Our goal with this exercise is two-fold.  The first is to deliver to our school and our fellow students an amazing experience which enhances their professional capabilities for understanding and managing crises.  The second is to make sure that CENEX continues and grows in the years to come.  We feel confident the first goal is achievable.  We're ensuring the second goal happens by involving Dean Christopher Hill in regular meetings on the development and planning of CENEX as well as numerous 1st year Josef Korbel School students who will be responsible for planning the exercise next year.

CENEX has been an enormous undertaking on everyone's part which requires hundreds, if not thousands of hours of work by a team to make successful.  From conception to execution every step must be gamed in advance.  The level of commitment and research required to make CENEX happen in incredible.  But we on the CENEX team feel we're about to bring something to fruition which is going to make the Korbel experience all the richer for incoming and current 1st year students.  In the next week I will be publishing another article featuring the results of the simulation, what we learned and what's going to be different during CENEX 2012.  I'll also include pictures (and possibly video) of  the simulation as it unfolded.

Shane Hensinger

MA candidate International Security
Josef Korbel School of International Studies