The U.S. financial crisis cannot be contained. Indeed, it has already begun to infect other countries, and it will travel further before it’s done. From sluggish trade to credit crunches, from housing busts to volatile stock markets, this is how the contagion will spread.

For decades, politicians and political scientists have clung to the notion that free nations breed happy people. Now, though, a new ‘science of happiness’ is turning that equation on its head.

In an exclusive new index, FP and the Center for a New American Security surveyed more than 3,400 active and retired military officers at the highest levels of command about the state of the U.S. military. They see a force stretched dangerously thin and a country ill-prepared for the next fight.