Wars are almost always limited, then, and any war between the United States and any participating members of the anti-hegemonic coalition and China would almost certainly be limited. In a limited war between two nuclear-armed states of roughly comparable power, the upper hand will go to the combatant best able to limit the conflict using rules within which it can gain a meaningful advantage, exploit those boundaries to achieve its objectives, and place its opponent in a situation from which escalation out of defeat will seem prohibitively costly or risky.
