It went kinetic with the Iran War.
In post war geopolitics, the USA has stopped declaring wars, and has engaged in limited wars of supposedly limited duration. All the while, it sought to win it by not disturbing the fragile world order.
The fragility was more obvious during the Cold War Era. It is not as obvious now, as it is more economic than military. Not that military force could flash into a major world war, but any such war could result in a nuclear exchange. Hence the limited and supposedly short durations within a fragile context. That part remains unchanged.
Has Trump blundered into another Vietnam scenario that he vehemently criticized? The US stopped winning its wars, he said. But what if this latest war does the same thing as Korea, Vietnam, and the War on Terror did? In all of these wars, the USA won its battles, but seemed to lose the war.
The big problem for Trump now is to get out of the war he started. He has to get out with some sort of victory, or he will have delivered yet another losing war.
I don't want to be negative here, but there seems to have been a few hiccups in this plan here already. The war is already 3+ weeks old, and he said that it would be over in 4. The Strait of Hormuz has to be opened, or this thing will go on for a long time. As for the knock-on effects of the closure of the Strait, these are already guaranteed to last for months into the future. This will have a political cost associated with it. He has rolled a pretty big pair of dice, you could say.
