Under current law, the U.S. Department of Defense automatically faces significant spending cuts over the next 10 years—cuts that america's civilian and military leaders have cadidly described as "devastating" and "very high risk."

Tension between the United States and Iran reached levels not seen in more than 20 years when, on Wednesday, Iranian military officials threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, the 34-mile wide channel through which more than one-third of the world’s oil tanker traffic passes. 

If there is one success story since 9/11, it has been the efforts to combat terror finance. If military action is sometimes akin to conducting surgery with an axe, efforts to dry up sources of funding are like wielding a scalpel.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese-Americans were put in concentration camps. That there was no comparable overreaction after 9/11, and that we have been able to preserve a free and open society, owes much to the fact that for 10 years there has been no repetition of those terrible attacks.

Two recent, seemingly unrelated events weigh heavily on the question of whether America will remain able to protect its national security or languish in failed policies and a federal debt crisis that has led to our credit rating being downgraded.

Forces allied to the former Gadhafi regime could still threaten a fragile new government using guerilla and terrorist tactics. It would be a mistake to underestimate his tenacity or to dismiss the warning of his son Seif that "We will fight to our very last man, woman, and bullet."

Merely monitoring Iran's foray into Latin America is the very least the United States must now do to frustrate Teheran's plans to threaten U.S. security and interests close to home.

The Japanese military is emerging from decades of pacifism. But do the country's political leaders have the vision and the will to make the country strong again?