WASHINGTON – The Obama administration has finally made explicit what it has always implied: President Obama will downsize our Navy.

This was made clear this past week when the Defense Department unveiled a plan to slow our shipbuilding rate and reduce the number of ships in our fleet. Instead of building 57 ships between 2013 and 2017, the Navy will now build just 41.

In addition, the Navy will retire nine ships years ahead of their design end-of-life dates. Seven of these are sophisticated Aegis cruisers, and two are amphibious ships.

This announcement provides a stark contrast between President Obama and Mitt Romney. While President Obama is cutting our naval power, Mitt Romney recognizes the value a strong Navy plays in the advancement of American interests.

Mitt Romney plans to reverse Obama-era defense cuts and rebuild the U.S. military for the future, including building 15 naval ships per year, up from our current nine. Mitt Romney knows this is a necessary first step in halting the decline in America’s maritime power as we seek to demonstrate our continuing engagement around the world.

President Obama does not possess that same understanding. He is placing our Navy — and our national security — in a precarious position. The Navy is far too small to meet its global responsibilities and currently consists of fewer ships than at any time since World War I.

The Navy today has global responsibilities. It manifests America’s presence around the world, in particular in “hot spots” like the Persian Gulf, the eastern Mediterranean and the western Pacific.

The Navy protects shipping lanes. It is a major means by which we project power and support the Marines. It protects those allies, like Taiwan, that are primarily threatened by maritime power. Because of President Obama’s military budget cuts, our Navy will no longer be able to fulfill these missions because it will no longer be a global force.

President Obama’s plan to scale back our naval power is curious, because the latest defense strategic guidance released by the Pentagon this month makes much of a pivot to Asia and the robust naval and air power necessary to retain a U.S. presence in that region.

That portion of the document adhered closely to the strategic findings of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel, a panel on which we sat and which was led by Bill Perry, President Clinton’s secretary of defense, and Steve Hadley, President George W. Bush’s national security adviser.

But despite those findings, one of many areas where the president’s budget has diverged from our panel is on the need to rebuild our Navy.

Our panel advocated for a larger Navy in recognition of the growing strategic importance of the Pacific region, which is predominately maritime. One would have expected Obama’s new defense budget to reflect those priorities. But, instead, he is shrinking the Navy.

We are now in a position where our already thinly stretched fleet will be smaller than that planned only last year, even as the Department of Defense continues to report the dramatic modernization of naval forces in China and a growing readiness crisis facing the U.S. Navy.

Additionally, recent aggressive statements by the regime in Iran remind us of the critical importance of protecting the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, a job shouldered primarily by our Navy.

Mr. Obama’s cuts in shipbuilding defy the advice of both his secretaries of defense. They are, pure and simple, the result of budgetary pressure.

Yet if the president had really cared about American power and security, he would have spent some of his $800 billion stimulus package on the Navy. That would have produced real, high-paying jobs in the United States.

Yet not a dime of that money was spent on military modernization or procurement, even though our shipbuilding industry has been in the process of consolidation for years. There will soon be an insufficient number of shipyards to support competition, a situation that will eventually create monopoly pricing and a dramatic increase in the price of every ship the Navy purchases.

Mitt Romney is well aware of the fiscal crisis facing the nation. If elected, he and his administration will take positive action to grow the economy and dramatically shrink the size of government where appropriate. Shrinking the size of our Navy and military, however, is not on the table.

Our Navy plays a critical role in the promotion and sustainment of the international system that is an engine of our prosperity, and we must reverse its current decline. That means, first and foremost, reversing the policies of President Obama. 

John Lehman was secretary of the Navy from 1981 to 1987, and Jim Talent was a Republican U.S. senator from Missouri from 2002 to 2007. Both were members of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel and are special advisers to presidential candidate Mitt Romney.