Ecole de Guerre Practicum

An Exceptional Spring 2020

When Professor Susan Perry’s annual Ecole de Guerre practicum was cancelled on short notice due to Covid-19, she needed a replacement opportunity – a meaningful remote experience with positive employment implications. The solution was a collaborative book project, bringing together students from multiple MAs, alongside some undergraduates, to produce a publication analyzing humanitarian responses to the unfolding pandemic.

Organized and operated by the French War College (Ecole de Guerre), this unique course offers you the chance to engage in a real-time, evolving simulation of military intervention. Several hundred École de Guerre officers spend three weeks preparing military intervention plans for a region in crisis (one that strongly resembles Western Europe). 

The two sides put their plans into effect during a complex, week-long simulation run by computer. AUP students are assigned the role of international and NGO humanitarian aid workers on the ground in a conflict zone; they work with mentors from AUP, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the military to create a humanitarian aid plan that provides relief to the tens of thousands of civilians caught in the crossfires of war.