缅北禁地

During her time as head of the Philippine Foreign Service Institute’s Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies, Professor Maria Ortuoste learned the critical role that policy experts play in shaping world affairs.

“It was fun and nerve-wracking and crazy at the same time,” said Ortuoste.

In the Situation Room, her job as a senior research analyst was to help the Undersecretary for Policy, the Defense Department, the Foreign Ministry, the Armed Forces, and the National Security Council employ the diplomatic tools of intelligence analysis, communication, chess-game strategy and dead-eyed negotiations to advance national interests.

At one point, she was read in to help craft a policy response to China’s infamous territorial incursion on the Mischief Reef that quickly destabilized the region.

“You see how policy is made, and it's so different from what we think it is. It's like a big machine with all these little cogs,” said Ortuoste. “So even if one sentence [of mine] was adopted, I was happy because I’m making a difference, and I can be proud of it.”

Crafting a sentence of 300-page policy may seem minor, but in the high stakes of international diplomacy, a single word misinterpreted can mean the difference between a calm resolution and armed conflict. And as globalization fuels an explosion of emerging economies eager to influence outcomes, training future ambassadors and policymakers who can build relations is more important than ever for countries like the United States.

To this, Ortuoste has been teaching a hands-on political science course since 2014: “Global Governance and the United Nations.” This course covers the diplomatic sausage-making used by foreign ministries worldwide.

The class is open to all Cal State East Bay students from every major because foreign ministries “need specialists in international organizations: on computer science, the environment, health, etc. It's another career path that our students can take,” said Ortuoste.

The main objective is to prepare students to participate in the ultimate mock international relations sausage-making fest: the Model UN of the Far West (MUNFW) Conference that’s held each April at the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame, California.

The MUNFW Conference attempts to mirror the formal, deferential and coffee-fueled marathon horse-trading sessions that happen during actual UN conferences in New York. 

From a strictly enforced dress code to ways of addressing fellow delegates—e.g., page 7 of the official MUNFW 73rd Session Conference Program reads, “Protocol requires that delegates address or refer to other delegates by referencing the Member State that they represent”— the conference is designed to emulate the feverish atmosphere of the world’s diplomatic stage.

The hours spent in committees bargaining to address agenda topics such as “Genocide and Mass Atrocities” can stretch to 13 hours in a single day, totaling nearly 30 hours of committee work across five days. The fun is in the daily grind of discourse and compromise until it’s time to hit the hotel pillows for a few hours.

Last spring, MUNFW convened hundreds of students from 22 western state universities from as far away as Montana and Utah, representing 72 countries.

Among these would-be foreign service officers were 20 Cal State East Bay students from Ortuoste’s class, split into delegations representing Fiji, the UK, and Vietnam, as well as a three-person leadership team that, for the first time in Pioneer history, was appointed to manage the General Assembly First Committee, which takes on disarmament and international security, a high-profile assignment.

To imagine the event, think “Dungeons and Dragons,” only the role players mingling within the cavernous Hilton Regency are not wizards and trolls, but policy wonks collaborating, cutting deals and influencing other nations to agree to solutions—one word at a time.

Sometimes delegates succeed, sometimes they don’t, just like in the real world.

This year, 缅北禁地’s delegates succeeded in their roles and found common ground, as they came home with two awards for the UK and Fiji delegations for their policy statements and draft resolutions. The First Committee also came home with the award for Best Draft Resolution that addressed international security topics such as nuclear weapons and power, AI and maritime security.

After a decade of MUNFW conferences, Ortuoste has a growing group of former delegates who pursued a career in foreign service and public policy. For example, one former delegate works at the Commonwealth Club of California while another works abroad for the actual UN, and yet another works with Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Ressa, in the Philippines.

If nurturing relations is part of the craft of diplomacy, Ortuoste’s former students are dedicated practitioners, as they often call her to catch up. And if schedules align, they meet up to swap stories, share inside intel, and absent-mindedly stir the old go-to beverage of the foreign service officer: the martini. But also, it’s about an appreciation for a mentor who's been in the trenches like them, and whose passion for peace and prosperity through insightful policy-making left a lasting and lifetime impression.  

“Sometimes we’ll get together as a group,” Ortuoste said, “One even told me, ‘You’re never buying another drink as long as I’m here.’”