On the eve of World War II, our political leaders had the foresight to realize the potential threat from and the extreme advantage of nuclear weapons if they could be perfected. Thus, the ultra-secret Manhattan Project was born.
The U.S. wisely developed the “bomb” before anyone else and used it to save millions of lives at the end of WWII — 80 years ago this month. Some decry its use and the loss of Japanese lives, mostly of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, the consensus view of historians and military experts is that the use of the bomb saved millions of lives.
My father was a WWII sailor on a destroyer in the Pacific at the time the bombs were dropped. He never expected to survive the war. In fact, his ship was the victim of a kamikaze attack, and some of his shipmates were killed shortly before the end of the war. His expectation — and that of all his shipmates — was that if the U.S. had to invade the Japanese homeland, substantial numbers of American military personnel would die.
The Japanese were sworn to fight to the last person in pledge to the emperor and god Hirohito. Ample evidence of this is documented. The Japanese people were ordered to fight to the death, even preferring suicide to capture by the enemy Americans. When Hirohito capitulated, his statement to his people was that they must surrender to avoid “the total extinction of human civilization” — his admission that had he not capitulated, millions more would have died. As it was, there were 41,000 Army, 36,000 Navy, 20,000 Marine, and 15,000 Army Air Corps deaths due to enemy action in the Pacific campaign. A horrible toll to defeat an implacable enemy.
When the bomb dropped and the Japanese eventually laid down their arms, hundreds of thousands of our military men and women in the Pacific were saved in an instant. They intuitively knew then they would survive and get to go home. Millions of Japanese were saved in that same stroke because Japan surrendered.
We have that same situation now. We know the battle for supremacy in the Indo-Pacific will be largely at sea. We need forces to succeed in that next war. If we do not defend our allies and our own economic, political, and generational interests, our nation will decline, and the world will look to China as the new world hegemon.
Our nation’s leaders must be awakened and create a new Manhattan Project to build the world’s most dominant Navy once again. Remember, at the end of World War II, we had more than 6,300 ships! If we do not rebuild the Navy, that inevitable confrontation with the PRC in the Pacific will lead to thousands upon thousands of deaths of American service members, primarily those in the sea services (Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard).
There is a famous old nursery rhyme:
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost.
For want of a horse, the rider was lost.
For want of a rider, the battle was lost.
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Think of the Navy as that horseshoe nail. The Navy is tiny in comparison to our country, with just under 400,000 men and women, including the reserves. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the resident population of the U.S. as of 1 July 2025 is 342 million. The Navy amounts to less than 1/10th of 1% of our nation’s population. At any given time, we have 95,000 sailors and marines in the Pacific, or ~1/30th of 1%.
The nation is failing the Navy. Despite the promises and good intentions, neither the current administration nor Congress, for multiple sessions going back years, has taken meaningful action to build the Navy to a force structure big enough to deal with the current threat analysis. Experts agree that we need a bigger Navy, yet nothing happens to bring that to pass.
We will pay in blood for the failures of our political leadership.
The blame falls on both sides of the political spectrum. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have translated validated intelligence and political assessment data about the existential threat that China represents to the U.S. and our allies around the world, but particularly in the Indo-Pacific, into effective action to rebuild our Navy.
When the next conflict occurs (and many experts predict the PRC will move to take Taiwan as early as 2027), thousands of sailors and marines will die trying to defend our allies and the nation’s political and economic interests. The blame for those deaths and the loss of our preeminence in the Indo-Pacific will fall on our political leaders of both parties.
This is a call to action! Our lives and our way of life depend on it. Copy this article and send it to your Congress members, post it to your social media accounts, and share it with friends and family. The defense of the nation is up to each of us. Contact your senators and representatives to urge them to restore our maritime supremacy against the PRC in preparation for the looming war.
