The U.S. National Defense Strategy is publicly available on the Department of Defense's website, and it lays out a roadmap for how the United States intends to preserve its position as the world's dominant power. It is worth reading, because it explains a great deal about the past year — and because it makes the decision to go into Iran look worse, not better.

The strategy has two major objectives. The first is to consolidate control over the Western Hemisphere and build a “Fortress America.” Greenland, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Honduras all lie within the Western Hemisphere. The pattern is difficult to ignore. The focus is on strengthening America's position in its own neighborhood before addressing challenges elsewhere.

The second objective is to keep regional powers focused on one another rather than confronting the United States directly. In Europe, NATO remains engaged with Russia in Ukraine. In East Asia, China faces strategic competition with Japan and South Korea. In the Middle East, Iran confronts Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council. In that environment, the United States can supply weapons, resources, financing, intelligence, and logistical support without bearing the full cost of every conflict. As regional competitors exhaust themselves, the relative position of the United States strengthens.

There is also an economic dimension. Periods of global instability tend to increase demand for U.S. military equipment, financial markets, and the U.S. dollar. That strengthens America's economic position and makes its large national debt easier to finance.

And that is exactly why entering the Iran war directly was a mistake. The strategy's whole logic is that others do the exhausting while America supplies and finances. Striking Iran ourselves inverts it. We took on the cost the document was written to avoid, and we did it with interceptor stockpiles already known to be dangerously low — the one resource that cannot be improvised, that takes months to build, and that has now been spent. Iran turned out to be running Chinese-backed air defenses, so the war did not isolate Tehran from Beijing; it pushed them together. American bases in Iraq were hit. Oil rose, which is inflation, which lands on the same households already angry about grocery prices. The strategy is real and it is coherent. This war is not an execution of it. It is a departure from it, and the bill is coming due in the one currency the plan assumed America would keep in reserve.