We Walk Away from Counterinsurgency Capabilities at Our Own Risk

Our generals avoided guerrilla-type wars such as they faced in Indo-China and were determined to concentrate on the conventional threat posed by the Soviet Union and North Korea, as well as on combined arms use of emerging precision technologies. Conventional warfare concepts such as maneuver warfare and air-land battle were refined and appeared to pay off handsomely in Operation Desert Storm and early in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. But you don't always get the war that you want.