The news arrives with a grim predictability. Three Indian sailors are missing after a US warship, the USS Abraham Lincoln, collided with an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman. This is not an isolated incident.
It is a symptom of a rot that has set into the global maritime order, a decline that rivals the late stages of the Roman Empire when the grain fleets were prey to Vandals and incompetence alike. The Gulf of Oman, a thoroughfare of global commerce, has become a stage for the theatre of the absurd: warships crashing into merchant vessels as if the age of sail had returned and the officers were blind drunk on grog. But this is no romantic era.
This is the 21st century, and we have radar, GPS, and automatic identification systems. Yet here we are. Missing men.
A shattered tanker. A US Navy that cannot navigate its own fleet without causing catastrophe. The Indian sailors are not merely victims of a collision; they are casualties of a broader intellectual and institutional decadence.
The US Navy, once the proud mastiff of the seas, now prowls like a mange-ridden cur, snapping at the heels of civilian traffic. This incident, read in the context of the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and the constant drone strikes in the Indian Ocean, suggests a systemic failure. We have forgotten the old rules: heave-to, keep watch, steer clear.
We have replaced seamanship with technology and arrogance. The missing men are a tragic reminder that in this post-modern shambles, the bill for our collective neglect always comes due. The families wait.
The navies posture. The world yawns. And the Gulf of Oman, that ancient waterway, swallows another secret.
