[creamyhorror]

I was looking for information on this too, because last I heard, TEST and Goons were closely-allied buddies, and here they are fighting each other in a relatively large way. Then again, I think Pandemic Legion and Goons used to work together against BoB, but then seemingly broke ties (and now PL+TEST, as part of HBC, have clashed with Goons). This article clarified things for me somewhat:

http://themittani.com/features/why-didnt-hbc-and-cfc-go-war

As far as I understand the article, the CFC and HBC are the two biggest coalitions in the galaxy, and war between them is a risky bet for either in the current conditions. There's not enough incentive for them to do it just yet, and old ties come into play. (Some commenters mentioned technetium moons as an underlying factor - very profitable sources of income which PL stands to lose in a war.)

From my outsider point of view, the political situation in the EVE galaxy has matured: the Allies (CFC) beat the Axis (BoB), some residual fighting has gone on, and everyone's trending either towards a Cold War or a United Nations. The ethos of EVE predisposes alliances to conflict, but there's a lot of territory and months of sleepness nights at stake when supercoalitions decide to go to war. And these supercoalitions used to be (at least in part) allied to each other against older enemies.

The pendulum might swing again, but this time it won't end as easily as BoB crushed ASCN in 3 months.