– The National Interest – The U.S. Army has a storied history of preparing for the wrong wars. In the post-WWII era, the U.S. has usually fielded an army trained to harness America’s superior technologies to defeat similarly organized nation-state armies in conventional conflicts. In places like Vietnam and Iraq, the army has found itself in messy contingencies fighting ragtag groups of insurgents where its training and capabilities were at best useless and at worst counterproductive. Despite some admirable efforts at adaption, the U.S. Army has usually found it difficult to overcome these initial disadvantages enough to achieve a favorable, lasting outcome in such conflicts. The U.S. military should keep this history in mind as it seeks to counter China’s growing capabilities and assertive diplomatic posture in the Western Pacific [3]. Although China is the type of nation-state peer competitor that the U.S. military prefers to deal with, this fact by no means ensures that Beijing will engage the U.S. on America’s terms [4]. The old adage that the enemy gets a say in the fight is as true of the People’s Liberation Army as it was of Iraqi insurgents. Any U.S. strategies for winning the “contest for supremacy” against China must grapple with this reality.