  We review recent developments in our understanding of the dynamics of
strongly-coupled chiral $SU(N)$ gauge theories in four dimensions, problems
which are potentially important in our quest to go beyond the standard
$SU(3)_{QCD} \times (SU(2) \times U(1))_{GWS}$ model of the fundamental
interactions. The generalized symmetries and associated new 't Hooft
anomaly-matching constraints allow us to exclude, in a wide class of chiral
gauge theories, confining vacuum with full flavor symmetries supported by a set
of color-singlet massless composite fermions. The color-flavor-locked dynamical
Higgs phase, dynamical Abelianization or more general symmetry breaking phase,
appear as plausible IR dynamics, depending on the massless matter fermions
present. We revisit and discuss critically several well-known confinement
criteria in the literature, for both chiral and vectorlike gauge theories, and
propose tentative, new criteria for discriminating different phases. Finally,
we review an idea which might sound rather surprising at first, but is indeed
realized in some softly-broken supersymmetric theories, that confinement in QCD
is a small deformation (in the IR end of the renormalization-group flow) of a
strongly-coupled, nonlocal, nonAbelian conformal fixed point.
