If one's military as concerns traditional warfare is not the most powerful in the world, there's no reason to fret much over non-traditional, asymmetrical conflicts, is there? In other words. America is threatened by the latter because of its power which means it has a lot of interests to protect, a lot of allies to protect, a lot of influence that is felt pretty much everywhere and therefore a lot of enemies - small wars are the consequence of big power. My point being that there's much talk going on - entirely in military circles of course - the public is by and large unaware of these issues, nor do many it seems in gov't, the press and the liberal intelligentsia care or listen in much on the conversation - but there's much talk about how America's current obsession with COIN and its affiliate small scale entanglements is drawing too much energy and resources from the 'big' war services, specifically the navy, but also the air force [is the F-35 a small wars platform only?], which increases the likelihood that China eventually catches up - and China doesn't actually even need to be caught up, just caught up enough so as to make opposing them in the western pacific either unthinkable or undoable.
So the logic is obvious, yes? There's no point in concentrating on COIN et al if it's at the expense of the broader strategic picture since it's the broader picture that creates a need for COIN in the first place - in other words, winning in Afghanistan is possibly worth it if we plan on remaining the preeminent global power - which means diverting and promoting the necessary strategic, technological and financial resources - if we're not going to do that, or find ourselves unable to do that [let's say Obama and his liberal catamites bankrupt the country] then all we're doing in Afghanistan [win or lose, sadly enough] is setting the table for China - it may be 10, 20, 30 years before they sit down at that table but regardless that's what all this effort will amount to.
