Model United Nations: A Story of Anarchy
Enjoying the debate
While living in Paris, they did not have speech and debate like in the States. However, they did have Model United Nations (MUN). I was very excited because I love debating. Debate felt like a puzzle to solve, and I enjoyed the argument.
The first time I went, I signed up for the Disarmament Committee. It sounded like fun, but most people had the same boring resolutions. They wanted to cut weapons, but they all lacked enforcement clauses because the reality was that the US would never agree. I didn’t write a resolution at the time because I just didn’t know what I could do to be novel. Instead, I tore into other proposals.
The second conference I went to, I started to formulate a plan. At the time, I’m not sure if I would describe myself as an anarchist nor would I have used the term “choosing violence”, but that’s what I did.
I wrote a resolution to dismantle the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). You can read it here, or I’ll summarize after the break.
I theorized that if everyone was allowed to make nuclear weapons, the cost of production would prohibit people from using them because they would also be assured their own destruction. As a result, people would eventually disarm once the weapons were seen as a waste of money to continue to maintain.
Side note: I wrote this the first time before 9/11.
Furthermore, the resolution would put no enforcement on countries to disarm. It was basically like the 2nd Amendment for countries with respect to nuclear weapons.
This was a shocking resolution to most in the committee. I think even presenting it caused people to short circuit. I remember one day when I was going after everyone else’s resolutions, people got fed up with me. They asked me if I was going to propose anything, and they were quite shocked when I did.
MUN was a safe place where you could and should push the bounds of political discussion. It wasn’t just mere role playing as nations, but you could go right into the realm of near fantasy. I quite enjoyed that aspect of my resolution knowing full well how ridiculous it was.
I also thought having a disarmament committee was equally ridiculous given that only a handful a nations really need to disarm, and those nations wouldn’t listen to anyone.
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