The powerful supercarrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, the largest warship ever built by Britain, with its crew of 2,500, has now arrived in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean where it is holding joint drills and maneuvers with units of the Maritime Self-Defense Force.
This great naval rendezvous, which will be joined by contingents from other countries, has received much media coverage and will undoubtedly be an awe-inspiring affair. The immediate purpose is clear, and will become clearer still as the carrier strike group, with its fleet of lethal F-35s and its attendant flotilla of protective support vessels, heads on in its journey toward the Taiwan Strait.
It will be one more reminder both that all international waterways must be kept open for peaceful commerce and that attempts to settle disputes and quarrels in the region by force of arms will always be frustrated by equal force and with global backing — China’s increasing saber-rattling over Taiwan and the Senkaku Islands being very much in mind.