The theory comes from history, not the other way around.

Too many seek to understand and solve "terrorism" and "insurgency" wholly within the context of a particular place and time and set of facts, and wholly within the context of the mission and ability of their particular institution sent out to deal with the same. This is so incredibly limiting.

Our history books love the war stories, but more often the truly interesting and helpful insights are buried in footnotes, or must be derived from clues authors sprinkle across their text without even being aware they are doing so. Often their main points and conclusions are of questionable value, but buried within the verbiage they use to make those points one finds the nuggets that helps form greater understanding.

Consider this popular example. Comparing British tactics in Malaya to US tactics in Vietnam is great sport; but it offers very little toward the understanding of why either situation occurred to begin with or equally what led to one result in one place, and very different results in the other. No pure military study helps one get to better understanding of what the truly interesting and important lessons from those conflicts are.

Military professionals love to put these conflicts into the context of war, identify a "threat" and wage war against it.

Development professionals love to put these conflicts into the context of basic needs, identify ways to meet those needs, and then poor money and energy into addressing them.

Governance professionals look for external factors for why they might be so rudely, illegally, and quit often violently, challenged in their governance. They then place blame on those external factors and set out to defeat them. This might be some ideology or form of governance different than the one they promote, or it might be some "malign" and "evil" competitor internal or external to the state that is somehow leading the populace to this dangerous state.

This is all human nature as well. People are the common thread. We are assigned roles and we play those roles out. History repeats over and over again as these roles are cast in the universal context of human nature, but flavored with the unique facts of each particular event.

I know I irritate many on this site when I tend to point out the futility of arguing tactics and weapons when one is pursuing such a flawed strategic understanding to begin with. Likewise when I dare to suggest that Clausewitz's very brilliant insights on war and warfare are often not much help (indeed, often quite dangerous) when applied to the internal conflicts and competition for power internal to some particular populace of system of governance.

I also know I don't have all the right answers or are asking all of the right questions. But I pursue answers and ask questions all the same. We have an opportunity to evolve, but opportunities only matter if one is willing to risk departing the well trod path of business as usual to pursue other insights that might actually help us get to where we are seeking to go.