At the beginning of the Iran war, I argued that whatever one thought of President Donald Trump’s justifications for striking Iran, the more consequential strategic consequence was to target China’s access to Iranian energy at a moment of maximum vulnerability. In a great power rivalry, every part of the globe interacts with and is dependent upon the other.

But energy is a double-edged sword. From Ukraine to the Strait of Hormuz, the wars of the 2020s reveal that energy is no longer one battlefield, but the keystone of modern warfare, which changes how America must approach conflict in the years to come.