Quote Originally Posted by 120mm View Post
We, as an army love HIC, because we're good at it, and it's relatively easy to do and train for.
Well good being a relative term. You, and we (UK) haven't faced a world class Combined Arms capability since 1945, and some light conventional forces proved challenging in both Korea and Vietnam.

I do not agree that it is easy to train for. Doing a Battle Group running replenishment, prior to performing a passage of lines, in full NBC kit and and with an air threat is extremely demanding. Do you need to be able to do that, is another question. A conventional capability lost, can be recovered, but will it be recovered in time and with the budget required?

Almost every Army in the world can do COIN, given the right training, leadership and small amounts of quite cheap equipment. It's the default setting for most armed forces. There are very few world class combined arms armies.

Nevermind that even in our "weakened" state, we could still defeat the next 10 opponents put together, and nevermind that the great majority of our military threats are insurgent-based, and 8 years into this current conflict, we still suck at COIN.
On one level I concur, but be careful of drawing a line between Insurgents and everyone else - and you don't "suck at COIN" IMO. The lesson of history is that, left to their own devices, the US Army learns fast.

We, as an Army, throw out the "but we don't to give up our conventional capability" as an excuse as to why that is so. We STILL have a huge excess of capability for any imaginable present or even near future threat. And we can spool up our ability to kill red hordes just about anytime we want, though maybe not by killing them the way we would've back in the day.
If you are saying that conventional capability has to adapt to a Geo-political reality, I'd agree. We might not agree on the precise detail of the Geo-political reality.