American Benevolence Hits Indians Again Near Oman.
(Chapter 11)
The ink on Chapter 10 was still wet oops, it was still in upload folder, when America demonstrated its benevolence again.
On June 8, 2026, a US missile struck the MT Marivex, a commercial oil tanker carrying 24 Indian sailors, in the Gulf of Oman. The distress call recorded the crew member saying “US Navy attack, the missile on our engine room. We have hole at the bottom. 24 crew. All crew Indian. Please help quickly, we need immediate help.” The Omani Navy rescued them. USA did not send lifeboats to save citizens of a friendly country called India. The voice of President Trump on speakerphone in a phone call made to bandmaster expressing his love for India still echoing in Indian Ocean.1
Two days later, Tuesday, June 10, the attack turned fatal. MT Settebello, another Palau-flagged tanker with Indian sailors aboard, was navigating the same treacherous waters. This ship, like the Marivex, had allegedly been carrying Iranian oil. The U.S. military attack left four Indian sailors dead.** They were the first casualties of the Indian crew since the blockade began on April 13. India lodged a strong diplomatic protest with the United States, calling the attack “deeply worrisome” and demanding it end immediately.
Was this commercial ship not given a warning before strike? No idea.
But this was not it. On Wednesday, June 11. The MT Jalveer, a Guinea-Bissau-flagged ship carrying 20 Indians, was hit in what officials described as a “separate strike” off the coast of Oman. Unlike the second attack, this time there were no deaths. All 20 Indian crew members were confirmed safe. Yet, the pattern was unmistakable: the United States had now disabled three merchant ships in just four days, each with Indian sailors on board.
The US established a blockade of Iranian ports on April 13, 2026, which means no ships can legally enter Iranian territory. The ships were intercepted 500+ kilometers away in the Gulf of Oman, nowhere near Bandar Abbas.
So what’s really going on?
We are told that the US has deployed three Boeing P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft specifically monitoring the Arabian Sea near India and Pakistan. The US uses satellite imagery to confirm ship positions. Hence, they triangulated the destination of these ships. For me, it is a bit like sci-fi high tech but it applied only to three ships running under the flags of tiny nations. USA has avoided any ship with flag of China. Attack on ships of nations who had nothing to do with USA-Iran war is a blatant display of naval power which has serious implications in international law. We will discuss those in next chapter.
Meanwhile, the acts of benevolence by USA never end. A USA court affirmed that.
Visa Fee
Last year, America had also imposed a $100,000 fee on every H-1B visa application by executive proclamation, targeting the Indian engineers, the Indian doctors, the Indian researchers who built significant parts of the American technology and healthcare economy. Last week, a federal court2 struck it down as an illegal tax. The administration is appealing. The 1.4 billion people watching from Delhi did not need the court’s opinion to know how legal or proper it was.
Simultaneously, trade negotiations between India and America collapsed again. Washington sent Rubio to New Delhi with an invitation. Then proposed 18% tariffs. Then proposed 12.5% more through a Section 301 investigation, published while an American delegation was sitting in New Delhi negotiating. India halted the talks without any comment.
In Chapter 10 this series identified America’s deepest failure as epistemological. It cannot read what it is dealing with. It arrives carrying Clausewitz where Kautilya would have been sufficient. But there is one failure the earlier chapter did not name directly, and recent events have forced it into the open.
The American president has stated, more than once, that unpredictability is a strategic asset. It is not. It is the confession of a power that has confused the ability to surprise with being untrustworthy. Kautilya distinguished these two things twenty three centuries ago with characteristic precision. Surprise is a tactical instrument deployed within a framework of honour. Unpredictability as doctrine destroys the framework itself. Without the framework there is no diplomacy, only threat management. Threat management stalled the trade deal with India.
Threat management is an offshoot of Asura Yudha, as discussed and explained in Chapter 33 of Accidental Empire. The ancient Hindu kings who lost India, refused to cross into Asura Yuddha as they knew that crossing this line is dangerous. They made the choice deliberately and understood its cost.
What is happening now is worse. The line is being crossed by a USA administration that does not know the line exists, advised by institutions that stopped asking honest questions, carrying vocabulary that cannot name what it is destroying.
Oman knew about dharma or the honour. It rescued the sailors. India thanked it in press statement.
Benevolence and Collateral Damage
The word “benevolence” in the title was never accidental or original thinking on my part. It is the oldest word in the American imperial vocabulary. President McKinley used the phrase ‘Benevolent Assimilation‘ in proclamation of 1898, issued after America took the Philippines from Spain. In that war America destroyed the existing order, and called the destruction a gift. The Filipinos who resisted were called insurgents. The 200,000 to 600,000 who died in the subsequent war were collateral to the benevolence of USA. The pattern of benevolence has continued under different administrative arrangements for last 125 years.
Worst part is that President McKinley at least had the honesty to call it assimilation. The current version does not even offer a name for what it is doing.
The epistemological decline in USA is shared by the Artificial Intelligence (AI) as well. After writing, I fed each of these 11 chapters into an AI for comments and error checking. Not once did an AI to relate back to McKinley’s ‘Benevolent Assimilation’. It recognized it only when I expressly mentioned his name with the phrase. It appears axiomatic that no ordinary American Citizen would remember it as it appears to have been removed from educational curriculum.
Nuclear Warhead
SIPRI’s 2026 Yearbook estimates that India now possesses around 190 nuclear warheads, up from 180. It also assesses that 12 nuclear warheads are now operationally deployed. It is the first time SIPRI has classified any portion of India’s arsenal as deployed rather than held in storage. SIPRI did not disclose how it arrived at the figure of 12 nuclear warheads in a deployed condition.3
Speculation is that it is a fall out of Operation Sindoor, last year. It appears to me that India’s nuclear deployment shift is not just a reaction to the May 2025 conflict. It is a response to a fuller pattern. America built Pakistan’s terror infrastructure in Kashmir. America then struck an Indian crew in the Gulf without apology. America imposed illegal fees on Indian workers. America sent a delegation to negotiate and then published Section 301 while that delegation was still in New Delhi.
India cannot trust America as a stabilising partner. That trust has a documented history of betrayal going back 80 years as narrated in past 10 chapters. It can not be erased by a phone call on speakerphone to US Ambassador in New Delhi.
When trust fails at that depth, the strategic posture has to change. The 12 warheads are the physical manifestation of that loss of trust.
In the next Chapter we shall discuss the International Law on which govern on high sea and right of navigation and trade.
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