"Don't Mess With Us (U.S.)"

"I think the message that the world needs to understand is: America is the strongest military power and we intend to remain the strongest military power and nobody ought to mess with that."

The United States' financial health has taken a big hit. It remains the most powerful economy in the world, nonetheless. It is still the wealthiest nation on Earth. That will not change. But it chafes at the indignity of its colossal debt. And so it should. That happens when you live beyond your means. Which being the world's single super-power leads to. With that title comes obligations, some explicable, some not, of throwing weight around.

And that comes at a considerable price. Waging consecutive wars in far-off lands is an expensive proposition. Gambling on the potential of swiftly entering a country to occupy it briefly under military rule, then handing it back over to its population after removing a thorn in the side of the international community, much less the natives, does not always go as anticipated. Bogged down for a decade in a costly attempt to restore some semblance of balance doesn't come cheap.

Who could have predicated that the mighty United States would be in such a parlous economic state with a meltdown that would take with it much of the industrialized world. Much less that its debt (of a gigantic $14-trillion) would be held by a massively populated and energetically-trading country challenging it for primacy on the world stage. Now that's a downer of significant degree.

So the inevitable must occur. Despite still stumbling back from the brink of economic ruination with unaccustomed, stubbornly-high unemployment figures and large, expensive domestic problems still waiting to be solved, the huge national deficit and debt must be addressed. Logically cuts must be made to the one segment of the nation's infrastructure that is the most finance-consuming, the massive military.

The United States will not be investing in its military in the casually huge amounts it is accustomed to. There will be cut-backs. Which will not, the administration hastens to assure the American people, impact deleteriously on its defensive effectiveness. For the cut-backs will lead to a more efficient, effective military. And aren't those the assurances people want to hear?

Cuts in military personnel numbers, equipment, armaments, research and deployment, but all of this pain will lead to gain in the long run. Got it?

The government fears that other nations may not quite 'get it'. So its chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has attempted to make it clear that if challenged, the U.S. will rise to that challenge. When it comes, for example, to the volatile situation with Iran just waiting for the ember to take light, why ... "if that happens, we can defeat that".

Iran is prepared to move its high-grade uranium refinement work to its previously-secret facility near the holy city of Qom in Central Iran, from the enrichment plant at Natanz. "The Fordow nuclear enrichment plant will be operational in the near future", chirped Fereudoum Abbasi-Davani, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization.

It would behoove Iran to be assured that the $487-billion cut in American defence spending over the next decade will do nothing to weaken the U.S. military-defence capability. The U.S. Army and Marines will simply become more adaptable, professional, adept, agile. Their capacity to respond will be enhanced, not harmed. Odd logic.

"There may be some around the world who see us as a nation in decline, and worse, as a military in decline. And nothing could be further from the truth", assured General Martin Dempsey. Iran and North Korea, Pakistan and any others who doubt that to be the truth, take careful note.