Until the end of the Cold War, conventional wisdom held that civil wars necessarily ended in military victories. Nonetheless, over twenty negotiated settlements of civil wars have been reached since 1989 in places as disparate as El Salvador and South Africa.

Scholars Sebastian L.v.Gorka and David Kilcullen recently observed that modern Western counterinsurgency (COIN) theory is built on a handful of books based upon practitioner experiences in a handful of 20th century conflicts.

The fundamental dynamic of the Cold War era was an arms race to build nuclear weapons. But in the long, often covert, “cool war” against al-Qaeda and its affiliates that began in earnest after September 11, 2001, the driving force has been – and continues to be – an “organizational race” to build networks.