While there is not much consensus on the specific way forward in Syria, there is one thing most do agree on; Syria is complex. It is complex in the familiar use of that term: complicated, intricate, and hard to understand. But it is also complex in the technical sense: an interrelated system of diverse components that interact with each other and their environment in ways that are dynamic and difficult to predict.
This distinction and understanding the distinction are critical to the success of policy makers trying to grapple with Syria. As a whole, Syria along with the broadening regional conflict is a wicked problem for policy makers; presenting challenges similar to those that have frustrated efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), among others. These complexity related challenges include: the regularity of unintended negative conse-quences; situations where one party’s solution is another party’s problem; “fixes” that work in the short term but fail in the medium term; tactics that are successful in one place but are difficult to replicate; “zombie problems” that do not stay fixed; problems that resist a definitive definition; and the reality that new urgent issues constantly outstrip the amount of resources available to address them. Most importantly, and deeply characteristic of the wicked problem, is the require-ment for continuous and adaptive learning, as the “problem” is more deeply understood with every effort to develop or enact its solution.
Success in Syria means that in addition to the content of any individual policy, plan, or deci-sion, policy makers need to change the process by which they engage with Syria and produce a series of decisions over time. The purpose of this article is not to advocate specific policy options. Rather, this piece will highlight four key practices that policy makers can use to maximize their ability to generate effective policy for Syria (as well as other complex and dynamic environments)