For 15 months, the U.S. Navy fought its fiercest battles since at least the Tanker War . The Navy racked up nearly flawless tactical victories in self-defense , defense of merchants , and defense of allied territory against the Houthis, a Yemeni militant group that sought to deny the Red Sea to global commerce. And yet if we take the goal of Operation Prosperity Guardian as being the resumption of commercial traffic through a key global artery in support of the rules-based international order,