Achieving peace and stabilization from complex situations truly is a wicked problem. Just one subset of complex situations, those having to do with irregular conflict, contains great variation—from peacekeeping or stability operations, to counterinsurgency campaigns, and can morph back and forth from one to another. Complex situations more broadly defined include non-conflict calamities as well, such as natural disasters, and, increasingly, conflict-prevention efforts. Each case is unique because of a host of important factors—such as history and geography—as well as more dynamic factors like the nature of the crisis, socioeconomic dimensions, power relationships, the external actors involved, governance variations, and differing political situations. Furthermore, operating in permissive environments versus non-permissive ones is an important differentiator when dividing types of complex situations. Non-permissive environments understandably tend to be dominated by security priorities. And, complicating things even more, it is usually a question of how permissive an environment is, not whether it is entirely permissive or completely non-permissive. The type, nature, and goals of complex situations vary greatly. For example, in situations such as a tsunami or an earthquake, donors provide rapid assistance to substitute for inadequate local capacity. A counterinsurgency or stability campaign, however, usually involves a longer-term commitment with more complex goals, including local institution building, even nation-building, and where local buy-in is much more important.2 Because of wide circumstantial variation, there is unfortunately no cookie-cutter strategy, no single paradigm, no set sequencing of actions, nor one formula that will serve as a blueprint for handling such a broad universe of complex situations. Even action sequencing, necessary to address complex situations, inevitably varies