T Complexity Conflict the of

to General Stanley McChrystal around the time he took charge of the conflict in Afghanistan depicted a mass of interests and threats, a New York Times article reported. It included topics such as “tribal governance,” “infrastructure services and economy,” and “military tactical strategies” among many others, all tied together with a chaotic web of arrows that looked as orderly as a bowl of spaghetti. The image could be described with two words: “It’s complex,” but five words offer more precision: “It’s a complex adaptive system.” As a step toward understanding conflict as a complex system, in May 2010 SFI’s Business Network and the New America Foundation (NAF) co-sponsored in Washington D.C. a one-day symposium, “Seeing Conflict in a New Light.” That new light was the illumination that comes from bringing ideas of complexity science study to this notoriously opaque phenomenon.