From Stalemate to Systemic Action
We Need the Problem-Solving Skills of an Engineer-Diplomat
There is no shortage of bold announcements and lofty goals. Yet these goals and slogans— ‘Winning the Climate Crisis Race’ or ‘AI for Good’ or ‘Access to Water and Sanitation for All”— are drowning in metrics, targets, and global summits that rarely provide desirable outcomes.
What are we missing and why?
Let us start with a story that was unthinkable a few months ago. In April 2025, India suspended the Indus Water Treaty—one of the most resilient international agreements, signed in 1960, and sustained through wars, droughts, and diplomatic crises.
What happened? It was not because of water scarcity or dam disputes.
There was a horrific terror attack on 22 April that killed at least 26 people mostly Indian tourists. India linked that attack to Pakistan. Expelled Pakistani diplomats, suspended the Indus Water Treaty, and closed border.
Pakistan rejected these Indian claims and retaliated by suspending the Simla Agreement, restricting trade, and closing airspace.
A standoff between both countries led to a military conflict on 7 May 2025 when India launched airstrikes targeting alleged terror camps in Pakistan. In response, Pakistan launched drone and missiles strikes around Indian-administered Kashmir. After the four-day military conflict, both India and Pakistan announced a ceasefire.
In another part of the world, an armed conflict between Iran and Israel began when Israel launched surprise attacks on key military and nuclear facilities in Iran on 13 June 2025. Iran retaliated with waves of missile and drone strikes against Israeli cities and military sites. The conflict concluded with a US-sponsored ceasefire that took effect on June 24, 2025.
Compare these two conflicts with another two: Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Gaza. Both continuing for years and killing hundreds and thousands with no signs of ending.
Though these four conflicts—India–Pakistan, Iran–Israel, Ukraine–Russia, and Israel–Gaza—despite their contextual nuances, share a surface resemblance. Yet their trajectories diverge dramatically. Two moved quickly toward ceasefire; two remain intractable. Why?”
In both India–Pakistan and Israel–Iran, ceasefires were declared. But only one had an institutional backbone to lean on.
What separates a temporary pause from a durable de-escalation is not just politics. It’s institutions and system memory to shape behavior and action.
India suspended the water treaty. Yet its embedded design continues to shape behavior. While the guns between Pakistan and India remain silent and two rivals are still locked in a war of words, yet each are sending diplomats abroad to shape the narrative.
On the other hand, Israel and Iran agreed to a ceasefire—but only through last-minute third-party intervention, not through any shared process.
In one case, the system absorbed the shock and working to find a more robust system.
In the other, the absence of any robust system may make future escalation more dangerous.
This contrast reveals the need for systems that do more than just providing a stopgap band-aid. We need agreements like the Indus Treaty that carry institutional memory, withstand shocks, and provide pathways for action via learning by doing.
Now contrast that with Gaza and Ukraine: Two conflicts still raging with no end in sight.
Why?
Because there’s no shared understanding of the problem. In Gaza, one side speaks of terrorism, the other of occupation. In Ukraine, one side calls it a defense of sovereignty, the other a correction of history. When the diagnosis itself is contested, there is little room for negotiation.
More importantly, both these two conflicts lack a functioning system to fall back on. There are no joint agreements, no channels for de-escalation, no system that can absorb shocks or manage a pause in hostilities. The Oslo Accords between Israel and Palestine is dead. The Minsk Agreements between Russia and Ukraine collapsed. Currently, there are no functioning and trusting pathways for Israel–Palestine or Ukraine–Russia to resolve the conflict. Outside international players seem to be engaged in proxy-wars instead of attempting to find actionable resolution of the conflict.
What continues to fuel these two conflicts is a form of politics without function – where declarations become mere posturing, vetoes stifle progress, blame games replace problem-solving, and ceasefires are used as battlefield maneuvers rather than actionable pathways to durable peace.
Diagnosing the complexity of the problem or recognizing the absence of political will is not enough. We need frameworks that can design and stress-test interventions under constraint and amid disagreement.
Together, UNPOLITICS can identify the dysfunctions, and Engineering Diplomacy can offer a problem-focused and process-aware framework to act despite the dysfunctions.
An Engineer-Diplomat synthesizes analytical precision of a scientist, the ethical responsibility of a humanist, and the strategic acumen of a decision-maker to negotiate and implement technically sound, politically feasible, and socially acceptable solutions.
If we want systemic change, we need to create systems that can adapt and change.
So, let's not just talk about new way of thinking. Let us nurture individuals and build systems that can adapt, absorb shocks, and evolve. Let’s move beyond declarations and co-create processes that learn by doing, act with humility in the face of uncertainty, and prioritize what works over what sounds good.
Join the conversation and help us design the institutions our fractured world urgently needs.