When I say "political entities" or "political systems" I am not comfortable myself that those are the best terms, but to be clear, I do not mean this is limited to "states" or that the political system is run by some formal government, but that it is under a single system of governance.

Harry Summers derived a simple social trinity from Clausewitz in his "On Strategy" of "Government-Army-People." And yes, I realize this is related to, but is not, Clausewitz's "Remarkable Trinity," yet I think it does provide a simple model for what I mean by a single political system or political entity.

This can certainly describe a state, but it can also describe a tribe, and in fact, probably describes both the Hatfield clan and the McCoy Clan. So, violent conflict between any two or more such systems shares a common nature that we describe generally as "war."

But what if the conflict is within any one of those systems? Illegal competition (as defined by the rules and laws of that system) to coerce change upon, or overthrow of, the leadership (or "government") of that system. This is a thing of a very different nature than conflict between two separate and distinct systems.

As an internal insurgency (revolution) gains success, at some point the political system may well divide as any living cell does, into two or more distinct systems, each with their own complete systems of governance, population and security forces. At this point, if the contest continues, what was once revolutionary non-war becomes war. Defeat the governance of an emerging system, as we propose with our counter-ISIL strategy, and one does not "win" the war, all one does is convert the conflict from war back into revolutionary non-war once again.

When we don't identify this critical distinction, we do not plan for, recognize, or respond appropriately to these critical transitions in the nature of a conflict.