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Picture this scenario: Major conflicts are breaking out across the globe, and lines are being drawn in fights that could drastically shift the international order. The United States of America, whose people are still recovering from a terrible economic crisis, are at a disconnect with their Democratic president who senses that war is on the horizon. He was, after all, elected on the promise of infrastructure, helping the middle class, and ensuring peace.

The president has taken a highly controversial policy of transferring more American weapons – mostly outdated ones that are two or three decades old –  to allies abroad, in the hope of bolstering their chances against aggression and staying under the radar of Congress and the American public’s desire to stay out war. But unbeknownst to the public, U.S. Navy ships for months have already been fighting a de facto war of skirmishes at sea. 

Our ships have been fortunate in that none of them have been hit or sunk by hostile fire, but many in Washington fear that it is only a question of time before our luck runs out. Then, in the fall, Americans are shocked to discover that one of our destroyers has been sunk, with a loss of over a hundred sailors. Still, America’s public is firmly against war, and all the president can do is continue to walk a tightrope as things continue to worsen.

I know what you’re thinking – Danny just described a not-too-distant future scenario with President Joe Biden, right? Actually, no, what you just read is , just days before the surprise Imperial Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

History both repeats and rhymes, and there are more than a few experts who believe we are  all over again, where the American public is completely unaware of what dangers are growing around them. Consider the following:

• Last year, the U.S. Department of Defense presented  that revealed China is increasing its military pressure against Taiwan, and in 2022 began construction of some 300 new ICBM silos. China is now on track to have as many as 1,000 deployed nuclear weapons by the year 2030 (the U.S. has ). Why?

•������� warns that China has been eyeing Taiwan for control and disruption of the global semiconductor market, and adds further, “Beijing is accelerating the development of key capabilities that it believes the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) needs to confront the United States in a large-scale, sustained conflict.”

• The same NIE also warns that North Korea is “using its nuclear-capable missile program to try to establish strategic dominance over South Korea and U.S. forces in the region by pursuing missiles probably aimed at defeating missile defenses on the peninsula and the region and issuing threats to militarily respond to any perceived attacks against its sovereignty.”

• China is closely monitoring Russia’s performance and the U.S. involvement in Ukraine for precedents that can be applied to Taiwan. Specifically, how can U.S. domestic unrest and political division be employed to win a propaganda war ? The Warsaw, Poland-based Center for Eastern Studies suggests that a defeat in Ukraine could lead to .

• According to the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, advanced  currently harassing international shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The International Institute for Strategic Studies warns the Houthi arsenal . If advanced Chinese cruise missiles are in the hands of Houthi rebels, who else have they been transferred to around the world?

Why should Hawaii pay attention to these developments? Because we are living in an era now where we can no longer presume that traditional U.S. deterrence or distance from conflicts will be enough to keep us safe.

Hawaii residents are very progressive, and they don’t like talking about war or conflict, but this is a moment where we definitely need to start thinking about it. What we consider rational or reasonable – along with our perceptions of morality, humanity, values or even good faith efforts – are not shared by the rest of the world and we have to get in our headspace the question “what can we do to prepare for the possibility of a major war that impacts Hawaii?”

We need to start having serious local policy roundtable discussions and policy symposiums to address that very question. The late WWII Army Gen. George C. Marshall, who later served as both Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, warned that America traditionally has a “policy of unpreparedness.” Since we know this, and because Hawaii is so close to the growing tension in the Pacific, we need to start using our islands as a locus for changing the security paradigm and talking about navigating our way forward in a multipolar world.

To start, I would say that Hawaii’s congressional delegation should call for a major Hawaii conference where U.S. experts in the fields of military, diplomacy, Asia-Pacific studies, economics and science come to the islands to discuss what we can do to prepare for the event of a future war that reaches our islands. Part of this is to familiarize policymakers, but an even greater emphasis would be on educating the public at large on what’s at stake.

We are losing the information war abroad and at home with our public, and this kind of summit could help inform voters on why they need to care again. The late Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, upon resigning from office, warned, “A conclusion by our enemies that the United States lacks the will or the resolve to carry out missions that demand sacrifice or demand patience is every bit as dangerous as an imbalance of conventional military power.”

Some of you may be triggered by that, but hiding our heads in the sand and claiming that everything wrong with the world is somehow the one-sided fault of U.S. aggression is not only naive, but dangerous. We have to think about all possibilities to avoid being caught off guard.

The next thing I would recommend is for the Legislature and county councils to begin robustly modernizing our civil defense capabilities, particularly in the areas of warning notifications, familiarizing the public with evacuation procedures, and also building shelters that can accommodate, in the event of disaster, large numbers of residents.

These are dangerous times that we are living in. We have the benefit of history to inform us how things can unfold. Isn’t it time that we learned  from the past, to change the future?