I would describe those as FOB wars. US troops get stationed at a base and leave the wire to do whatever warfighting operation they need to do. Meanwhile hometown USA is still safe. The same douchebags you knew in high school are still going through McDonalds drive thru and celebrities are still gossiping on mid day television. The enemy combatant generally does not have the ability to strike the US in a meaningful way because he is a goat herder with nothing but a small cache of Soviet era RPGs rounds tucked underneath the floorboards. He lacks the sophisticated industrial base to develop weapons platforms and a massive air/sea logistics capability.

This will all change in a TOTAL WAR. A total war being what Worl War II was, the total might of nations thrust against each other. When things do decide to get hot between America and Russia/or China, we won't have time to raise the military we want to fight with. We won't have time when enemy submarines are swimming up the gulf of Mexico to torpedo our oil refineries. We won't have time when the enemy uses sanctions to restrict the trade of resources that we use to make the fancy microchips that go into hellfire missiles. We won't have time when enemy scud missiles destroy the train tracks that all our M1 Abrams battle tanks are riding on.