President Donald Trump’s war on Iran should serve as a wake-up call: The United States of America is strategically lost in the emerging multipolar, neo-mercantilist world and urgently needs to address the widening gap between its expansive legacy strategic commitments and its potentially diminishing relative power. Strategic streamlining and rebalancing to align vital U.S. national interests to available American power (based on a realistic assessment of actual and potential national resources that can be effectively mobilized) is an existential necessity and not a choice.

Trump’s quixotic war on Iran to slay the multiheaded Persian hydra reflects the (1) continued passionate attachment to the 1980 Carter Doctrine (which proclaimed U.S. hegemony over the Persian Gulf region) long after America ceased to be dependent on Persian Gulf oil and gas resources for its energy security, and (2) disregard for the evolving and growing asymmetric capabilities of the Iranian regime to effectively neutralize and counter American power.