Regardless of the success of this particular experiment, you've got to hand it to the US when it comes to fusion research.

US is :

Funding ITER (founding member of ITER)

Funding Z-Pinch

Funding Polywell

Funding steam-based fusion (yes, really)

Funding laser fusion

Funding this new approach by Lockheed Martin Skunkworks

Funding 3 other inertial containment fusion approaches

Over 30 small scale experiments that don't appear to currently justify bigger investment.

The EU (which has ~20% more GDP than the US):

Funds ITER ...

Funds 2 other tokamaks (exactly the same approach as ITER, but smaller scale, and they're being defunded, most people claim because of ITER)

... that's it

Japan

Also supports a number of fusion research paths.

China

Funded a single Tokamak that is reportedly decommissioned by now. One might add that the organization that built it is suspected of forging their results. The end.

Most fusion approaches, including ITER, can only work if our current physics theories are flawed. Polywell, to a lesser extent Z-Pinch and several others, for example depend on the ability to keep a gas non-thermalized for a relatively long time (meaning molecules in a single volume of gas having different temperatures for longer than it takes them to move from one side of the gas volume to the other). Violates thermodynamics as it currently exists. If ITER generates the Neutron pressure it is predicted to generate, it will collapse in a matter of hours at best (which is were most sources got the "fast neutrons destroy matter" criticism. And yes, it's of course true for all fusion approaches. BUT it only matters if it destroys matter fast enough. For example, cosmic radiation destroys any kind of matter a lot better than even the worst fusion reactor. And you're exposed right now ! Nothing can stop them ! Run for the hills, except that even hills don't stop all of them. However, the rate of damage is so low, it would take millions of years to destabilize the head of a needle. The same is true for small fusion reactors).

The reason I mention this is that this is the criticism against a lot of the fusion approaches. Z-pinch cannot work because it violates ... Polywells can't work because gases thermalize whether or not you have big electrical fields fooling around ... of course, similar (and "equally" valid, in other words, with an unknown level of validity since we haven't tried) criticism exists against ITER. ITER is simply the bet that what you might call "the scientific community of physics" feels most comfortable with.

When I was taking philosophy, one remark stayed with me. On many occasions in history the scientific community has rallied around certain theories. Generally "the next theory" (e.g. relativity versus Newtonian physics) was available for decades before it became popular. Every single time the scientific community rallied around one of the theories and not once, not one single time, did they rally around the right theory (why ? Because almost every single time they rallied around the old theory, even in the presence of known flaws like the black body paradox. Scientists are no different from the rest of us : if possible, they'd like everything to neatly stay just the way it already is).

Given that, the US and to a lesser extent Japanese approach to fusion appears to be the right one. Maybe they should do more, but not by increasing ITER's funding. Frankly, if there is a good way to do fusion, the US deserves to find it, and frankly, the EU does not.