The rules for success in the continental security paradigm include: first, avoid two-front wars with multiple neighbors; second, avoid great-power neighbors because today's friends become tomorrow's foes; third, take on neighbors sequentially, setting them to fail, destabilizing rising threats, and absorbing buffer zones when opportunity arrives; fourth, alternatively, sow mutual resentments among neighbors with disinformation so they weaken each other while you play the jackal, stealing the kill.