Abstract for: Proposal of a 'Goldilocks' Methodology for the Assessment of an International Crisis

Through a well-known metaphor in the Anglophone literature, this paper addresses the value of a proposed methodology for the analysis of complex international crisis, by stating that the Systems Thinking and System Dynamics approaches can constitute the common ground between the need to develop a full scale and time-consuming systemic understanding of the area and the pressure to get the action going before is too late: a “Goldilocks” approach (which is just right), that is a phased approach that neither leads to a too linear and simplistic model, which would surely lead to timely, yet inevitably ineffective, courses of actions, nor to a too "brain-intensive" one, which would, eventually, produce a more accurate and detailed comprehension of a crisis but with a high risk of eroding massively the little precious time available for intervention. Also, we will propose a possible Crisis Archetype, which, in our perspective and experience, can easily be recognized in every Crisis Situation and that can thus be considered in order to gain insights into the Crisis being analysed. All this will be operationalized through an applied case of a recent International Crisis, still active today: the crisis in Mali.