Are we our own worst enemy?

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made waves on Friday when he claimed that the national debt--not terrorism or the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--posed the single greatest threat to our national security.

American taxpayers are going to pay an estimated $600 billion in interest on the national debt in 2012, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen told local leaders and university students [in Detroit].

“That’s one year’s worth of defense budget,” he noted, adding that the Pentagon is going to have to work to “cut the fat” from its overhead spending.

At first glance, Adm. Mullen's comments represent a new twist on an old theme. During the Bush administration, it was a common (if not overwhelming) concern that the dual conflicts in the Middle East were spreading our military too thin, leaving us vulnerable to a potential uprising in North Korea or Iran. Now the concern is that our wallets--rather than our troops--have been overtaxed, and that significant defense spending cuts are inevitable.

But the debate as to whether debt could be more dangerous than terrorism may have more far-ranging implications for American society. After the nation was knocked back on its heels by 9/11, the effect of the terrorist act was to steel our resolve, uniting us (at least initially) in a surge of patriotism. While we may have disagreed on the proper response to the attack, we were united in cause and principle.

But the failures of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers dealt a more significant blow to our collective psyche, giving rise to a wave of distrust in institutions and each other. Rather than uniting in response to the financial crisis, our nation has instead experienced fissures from one coast to the other, with the recession dividing us along economic, cultural, and even racial lines.

Empires rarely fall as a result of an external force; more commonly, they are torn apart by those willing to compromise (or at least lose sight of) the founding values that unite, for the benefit of various short-term interests. Regardless of our individual views on deficit spending and how best to solve the ills that recession has wrought, it should be clear from Adm. Mullen's comments that crises borne of internal factors can often be more dangerous and insidious than external shocks.

[Department of Defense]