Table of contents : Table of Contents List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgements About the Stimson Center Preface List of acronyms 1. Coercion in a competitive world 2. Multi-tasking: How the armed forces support US national interests short of war 3. Making use of history 4. Syria: Stumbling into stalemate 5. Iran and Iraq: Strange successes, strange failures 6. Western Balkans: Hard targets and harder victories 7. Russia: What’s old is new again 8. China: Narrow Straits and Rising Tensions 9. Coercion in the past, and the future of competition Technical Appendix A Technical Appendix B Index