Committee Introduction

What occurs when a dormant volcano erupts? While no dormant volcanoes will be harmed in this committee, the metaphor will be applied to illustrate what we seek to capture. In 2040, rival ideologies, mounting resource shortages, and narrowing arenas for great-power influence have produced a world profoundly polarized. Nations are left with two paths to survive: align with an existing superpower or unite with neighbors to forge a new one. Abstention remained an option, but it brought only devastation as entire continents were reshaped by these trends.

Each continent differed. Europe -abandoned by the U.S. amid republican isolationism and NATO’s subsequent disintegration- re-emerged as a continental superpower, confined Russia into Central Asia, and expanded into Africa. Africa, unable to liberate itself from its past, became a theater of Euro-Sino rivalry over virgin resources. In the Americas, South America embodied abstentionism's costs as it was plagued by chronic economic hardships, while the U.S. -a self-sufficient republican police state sustained by mass surveillance- scrambled to preserve its supremacy through a growing military-industrial complex and a Pacific-centric foreign diplomacy against China. Oceania oscillated between both camps and reaped the benefits from each. In Asia, China -victorious in its 2027 Reunification Campaign- was contained by India, consolidated Southeast Asia, and clung to North Korea against the Pacific Defense Pact of Japan, U.S, and South Korea as conflict was imminent.

In this Futuristic Joint Crisis Committee, the fate of the Korean Peninsula will finally be sealed. Much like the occurrences in Ukraine amid the persisting Russo-Ukrainian War in the past 3 years, we will spend the 4 days of BOĞAZİÇİMUN’26 simulating a potential Second Korean War as a fictional projection of how 15 years of unresolved tensions could erupt. As the space to relieve pressure diminishes, it has to burst from somewhere, doesn’t it?