"City, Empire, Church, Nation" by Pierre Manent in City Journal
We have been modern for several centuries now. We are modern, and we want to be modern; it is a desire that guides the entire life of Western societies. That the will to be modern has been in force for centuries, though, suggests that we have not succeeded in being truly modern--that the end of the process that we thought we saw coming at various moments has always proved illusory, and that 1789, 1917, 1968 , and 1989 were only disappointing steps along a road leading who knows where.
http://www.city-journal.org/

I'm not sure the process is illusory as much as fragile and at times reversible?

On the doctrine stuff--about which I know next to nothing if not less--I am interested in "options" as mentioned above and for two reasons:

1. The military doesn't get to choose and needs to be prepared,

and

2. The intellectual study of "options" countering an insurgency may help us in other ways, lead to other lines of productive inquiry, something like that.

At any rate, FWIW. I don't know, maybe if I were drinking rum I might not be so confused about all of this....