My instinct is "no". The human (and other) cost of war is so high that we shouldn't undertake it just to keep our hand in. We should also think about the effect that permanent warfare would have on the society - think of 1984. Or North Korea. Or classical Sparta. Or Russia in the Cold War (or, arguably, the West in the Cold War). Now, you'll find some people saying that that warfare/military service has a net positive effect on society (think of Rome in its early days versus its late days), but I'm not convinced.
The other thing is that the UK has been practising warfare; I think there was only one year between 1945 and 2000 when our troops weren't deployed in some kind of hostile situation (Malaya, Korea, Kenya, Northern Ireland, the Falklands, the first Gulf War, Kosovo, Bosnia...) The US military has also fought a fair few wars in that time, but they didn't fight a 30-year counterinsurgency war within spitting distance of their homeland. I've heard that this is (or at least was) reflected in the relative quietness of the British sectors of Iraq, but this could well just be self-congratulatory British media (and the Brits seem to be taking quite enough casualties, anyway).
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The other thing is that the UK has been practising warfare; I think there was only one year between 1945 and 2000 when our troops weren't deployed in some kind of hostile situation (Malaya, Korea, Kenya, Northern Ireland, the Falklands, the first Gulf War, Kosovo, Bosnia...) The US military has also fought a fair few wars in that time, but they didn't fight a 30-year counterinsurgency war within spitting distance of their homeland. I've heard that this is (or at least was) reflected in the relative quietness of the British sectors of Iraq, but this could well just be self-congratulatory British media (and the Brits seem to be taking quite enough casualties, anyway).