 But I'd like to take a minute to discuss one lesson of history that the United States has forgotten in the hope that revisiting history can help us regain our competency at deterrence. And this lesson may sound counterintuitive. I wouldn't have believed it myself a couple of decades ago when I was working as a journalist in China writing for the Wall Street Journal. And before I had the privilege of serving in the US military and before I'd expanded my reading list of history beyond the sometimes thin college syllabi,