Interesting reporting from Steve Coll: You often hear it said that our military isn't prepared to wage a grueling counterinsurgency conflict. But there's apparently a growing concern in the army that the long counterinsurgency conflict is degrading their ability to fight conventional wars. Apparently, there's a serious school of thought that feels the Israeli Defense Forces were outmaneuvered by Hezbollah because they'd lost their expertise in "precision" activities like artillery firing. Now, it's not exactly clear to me which country would be interested or capable of engaging America in “high intensity force-on-force conflict,” and it seems that the likely threat profile of the coming years would militate towards developing asymmetric talents even at the expense of some conventional skills, but I'm not an expert on these matters.
