Report on the First Session of the PAC Policy Simulation:"Crisis in Pakistan"

Japan has failed to formulate and execute appropriate foreign and national security policies in a timely fashion. This is because it lacks common medium- and long-term policy visions and proper communication interface between politicians and bureaucracy. In order to ensure that the appropriate foreign and national security policies are established, we believe it necessary to introduce a Japanese version of the political appointee system. "PAC Dojo," the program we have launched for Political Appointee Candidates (PACs), who were solicited and selected by us, is designed to train them intensively in policy simulations (in which PACs are required to play a role in policy-making in scenarios drawn up to be as close to the actual policy-making processes as possible) in order to develop them into full-fledged candidates for political appointments.

 On July 4-5, 2009, the Canon Institute for Global Studies held the first session of policy simulation. The theme set for the first simulation was "Crisis in Pakistan." While the simulation program is intended primarily to train PACs, it also aims at accumulating possible policy options to be considered by experts that may be useful in potential future crises in the real world. Therefore, the experts who were invited to the first policy simulation included researchers, journalists, and government officials currently in office. Some officials from the National Defense University under the U.S. Department of Defense were also invited to the session, and approximately 60 people in total attended the first policy simulation. About half of the participants were divided into teams that played the simulated roles of the Japanese Prime Minister and his staff, the officials of the Cabinet Secretariat, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, and a media organization in Japan. The rest of the participants were allocated the simulated roles of the US President, White House officials, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Defense, the governments of China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran, and the Arab League.......

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