With the congressional “supercommittee” – or, to be precise, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction – now complete, the stage is set for a very high drama indeed. Now comes the moment when Americans must confront the costs of remaining the world’s sole superpower, the guarantor of an international system that has created a generation of great-power peace, widespread prosperity, and unprecedented human liberty.

The committee members must take action to avert the train wreck awaiting the Pentagon: doing nothing will result in an automatic “sequestration” that will make the cumulative reductions in military spending of the Obama years something above $1.3 trillion. That’s a cut with big consequences. New Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen – a man who has heretofore pronounced the debt to be the greatest threat to the country – last week said the cuts in view would be “disastrous” and “unacceptable.” The incoming chairman, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, described such cuts as creating “very high risk” to U.S. national security. Serious stuff.