“Playing” in the Classroom: Interview with Lieutenant General Michel Yakovleff

Lieutenant General Michel Yakovleff has been redefining the possibilities of what a class on military strategy can look like since 2017. This year, he has taken his innovative approach to new heights with the TYRHENNIA course, taught both in-person and remotely during the COVID pandemic.

Offered in the Spring semester of the first year of Sciences Po’s Master in International Security at the School of International Affairs, this class provides hands-on, real-life experience in NATO negotiations in what Lieutenant General Michel Yakovleff terms “play”. For the Lieutenant General, this role-playing exercise enables students to gain negotiation skills, as well as an integral understanding of the functioning of NATO in an interactive setting. In the following paragraphs, Michel Yakovleff goes into detail for us, answering our questions about this new approach to learning military strategy.

What is the format / innovation that makes your course stand out? Could you detail it for us?

The format is based on true, continuous role-play, from one session to the other. The class plays a sequence of very central NATO committees that are crucial within the decision-making framework of an operation. I start with a presentation about NATO and the decision-making process related to crisis management (the first session). In particular, I explain the technicalities of negotiations at NATO, which are built around agreeing on text. The class is handed a full-blown scenario, based on the fictional country of Tyrrhenia (Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily, united and independent since 1861), which is breaking up in a Yugoslav-type process. They are also handed the military documents that contribute to the political decision-making process, as well as updates about the fictional situation in the theatre of operations.

The first committee is the Political Committee (PC), under Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs and Security Policy (ASG/PASP). The PC is chaired by ASG/PASP or a senior member of her team (the current ASG/PASP is Bettina Credendahl, from Germany) and the Chair is supported by an Assistant and a Secretary (the three roles are played by students, in a format which I call the Trio). They represent staff from the International Staff. The other students play the roles of representatives from national delegations to NATO (NatReps). The Chair's role is to foster consensus on the NATO End State and Strategic Objectives in view of a potential NATO operation. Each NatRep has national instructions to play with. Obviously they do not match, which gives meat to the negotiation.

During each session, the students work as members of high-level committees of NATO, either as members of the International Staff, or as representatives from a nation (NatReps). The aim is to develop a NATO consensus. After each session, they report to the capital (= me) while the Chair produces a Revised Draft. The Revised Draft is then circulated for comments from the nations and the NatReps produce recommendations to their capitals for the comments. And so on until a Final Draft is produced, where all issues have been ironed out, through the use of a Silence Procedure (a specific NATO process to achieve consensus when it is not formalised in session but deemed within reach by the Chair). The same process is repeated in the Operations Policy Committee (OPC), under ASG Operations (ASG/OPS), for a draft NAC Initiating Directive (NAC = North Atlantic Council, the supreme body of NATO).

After four OPC sessions, the students turn into a NAC Working Group developing the NATO communiqué in view of the purported operation, and they prepare the Secretary General for a press conference. Two students play SecGen, their teammates playing journalists.

Two sessions also involve practices of decision-making at the operational level. One is a Joint Targeting Board, replicating what happens within a military headquarters, to decide on whether or not to strike a specific target, and if so, under what conditions. The second is a preparation for the Conseil restreint de défense, in France, here again assessing how to deal with a potential threat.

Throughout the course, the students are exposed to the roles of national representative (NatRep) or members of the International Staff. They work based on national instructions and specific products emanating from the military chain of command (SACEUR Strategic Assessment and Military Response Options). For the military aspects and implications, the professor (myself), a former serviceman with extensive experience in such situations, fills the role of the military expert or the representative from SACEUR (SACEUR = Supreme Allied Commander Europe).

Did this project come with the need to offer remote courses, or were you already offering it in face-to-face classes? How did you adapt your course to the Covid measures and remote teaching?

The idea of the course had been developed and agreed on in principle by the Vice Dean and Alice Juddell last year (2020). The general concept of the class is inspired by a similar exercise conducted at the NATO Defence College in Rome, with significant differences though, not least of which is the scenario which I developed entirely from scratch.

The idea was to have it in real-life meetings, just like at NATO HQ. It happens that PC or OPC meetings at NATO headquarters can be programmed on a weekly basis when NATO is conducting prudent planning, as opposed to crisis planning.

It moved remote by accident. I happen to give another class, called Exercice Coalition, where I prepare our PSIA students who will join the Ecole de Guerre in Paris for their capstone exercise, Coalition, in April. At that time (March 2020), the first confinement struck. Exercise Coalition was moved to May, which preserved the military part of it but ruled out any civilian participation (beyond PSIA, the other civilian participants are American University Paris, Institut Supérieur de Communication et de Production Audiovisuelle, Institut Diplomatique et Consulaire, Centre d'Études Diplomatiques et Stratégiques). So we were left with either cancelling the end of class or doing something else. That is where Alice Juddell suggested that I transform Coalition into a trial run of the NATO exercise we were considering for the following year.

My students had been exposed to some basic NATO doctrine, they knew the scenario, we had, notionally, five sessions to go. Luckily, SciencesPo was closed for a week, precisely so that professors like me could reconfigure their classes. It gave me time to produce the class material based on the scenario they knew, and also, the instructional material so that they could operate as a NATO committee.

The course started from there, on Zoom - which, by the way, is exactly what was happening at NATO, so in that respect, going distant mode was absolutely realistic.

I need to stress that in my course, much happens between the sessions since the NatReps are expected to inform Capital, to consult, to seek permission, etc. They are also encouraged to "walk the corridor" by engaging with their fellow NatReps to try to influence them, to seek common ground, to create communities of interest that would give more weight to their own national positions in session. This happened by mail and by zoom and kept everyone busy, in bursts, during the week.

Where did the desire to propose an innovative format come from?

I did not seek innovation for the sake of innovation. It just happens that this true role-playing exercise is a bit different from standard classes. I mentioned the NATO Defence College exercise, called NDMX (NATO Decision Making Exercise). I happen to be a Senior Mentor there, so I was accustomed to the general sequence and I thought it would be the best way to "teach NATO" to our students at PSIA. You can brief for hours on the NATO crisis response mechanism, you can discuss the interaction between NATO as an organisation and its member states, you can read the history of operations and crisis, you can do theory and doctrine, but ultimately, the only way to understand it is to play it. This is what NATO does within the context of NDC Rome, and I thought an adaptation for our students would provide for a fun and lively course.

What was the result? Did you get feedback from students?

The result was quite smashing, actually. This year (2021), Exercise Tyrrhenia was clearly played as advertised. I think we would all have preferred to play it "en présentiel", but it works very well at a distance. The feedback I get from my students is very positive. First of all, they love the play, as such. You should see how they immerse themselves in their roles! When I get the reports, it's really funny. Of course, the first session of play is tense, so I have to intervene quite often to help them along. Actually, as I tell them, I prefer to let them swim a bit, and I jump in only if they are starting to sink or if they are wasting too much time.

They also like the realism and how they build their "deliverables" (the NATO name for a document that has to be "delivered" in order for decision making to progress). Gradually, things fall into place, there is some give-and-take, much of it behind the scenes . I want to stress that the result is not preordained. I give instructions but I do not have a "school solution", so the ultimate deliverable reflects their own work.

And third point, which they all insist upon: it is great for social engagement. They become a team very quickly, since there is so much interaction required between sessions. Also, they change roles four times, so the geography of contacts, if I dare say, changes every time.

Fourth point: they actually know how NATO works, they understand it--they have lived it. I do not consider that NATO skills are essential, since it is pretty marginal as an employer (4,000 civilian staff), but the skills acquired in negotiation techniques and in consensus-building are very useful in the corporate world also.

More generally, for you as a teacher and pedagogue, has this period brought you to a turning point in your teaching practices? Will the return to normal be a return to your pre-Covid practices or will you want to play both online and face-to-face?

This has not led to a turning point for me because--together with Mark Maloney and Alice Juddell--we intended to offer this class well before Covid struck. It is generally my way of doing classes whenever I am given the opportunity: to engage as much as possible, to have the students play. This case--Tyrrhenia--is pretty extreme because it is designed from scratch, as an exercise, in the military sense of the word. The teaching material is the exercise. There is teaching material, such as basic NATO doctrine, and scenario material--quite extensive, actually--that is produced, enough to create the fictional reality without which my students could not play. But beyond that, my role is only of "the military expert" as required in session, or as a mentor.

On zoom, we have a code. I shut the camera and the microphone, and I just watch them play. If I think I should say something, I put the camera on, so the Chair--who is running the session--sees my sunny face appear. He hands me the floor when it is convenient to him, I make my point, and I recede again. Also, if the Chair has a problem, a technical issue with the text they are working on, or a military point to be clarified, he calls on "the military expert" to provide advice, so I put my camera on and respond.

So I can play the exercise either way, "présentiel" or "distanciel". Everyone prefers the presentiel version, if only for the human side and the body language, but the exercise is not massively impaired by playing via zoom. In essence, I am not the professor, I am the facilitator. The group, the collective, is the professor. They are given a situation and a mission, a few indications about how to proceed, and then they are left mostly to their own devices. To a large degree, what they practice is self-education.

The Sciences Po Editorial Team

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