Video shot from an American B-52 shows a sleek Chinese fighter plane closing in fast, disappearing beyond the big bomber’s wing, and then reappearing perilously close before peeling away. 

The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command called the intercept “unsafe and unprofessional,” having been “conducted at night, with limited visibility in a manner contrary to international air safety rules and norms.” It was, the command said, the latest example of “unsafe, unprofessional, and other behaviors that seek to impinge upon the ability of the United States and other nations to safely conduct operations.” 

The command implied the pilot of the Chinese J-11, an imitation of the Russian Sukhoi SU27, may have been “unaware of how close he came to causing a collision,” but clearly he knew exactly what he was doing. The point was intimidation, a warning to stay away from the South China Sea, which China claims as its own. 

“The U.S will continue to fly, sail, and operate — safely and responsibly — wherever international laws allow,” the command said, putting on a show of defiance as tensions rise across the region in tandem with the Israeli-Hamas war and fears of fighting at crisis points in Asia. 

It’s exactly that concern that got the Americans and South Koreans to order a surprise joint exercise this week within five miles of the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. American and South Korean warplanes flew in mock support of five thousand troops on the ground. 

The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff of the South Korean army, General Kim Seung-kyum, said a North Korean attack on the South “would be similar to the pattern of Hamas’s invasion” of southern Israel. The main difference, he added, was that the North Koreans, with thousands of artillery pieces just above the DMZ, would present a far more serious threat than Hamas. 

The Americans and South Koreans staged their latest war games several days after the first exercise involving Japanese, South Korean, and American planes operating together. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said the trilateral display reflected “the strength of the trilateral relationship” and “our shared values and resolve against those who challenge regional stability.”

Japan’s defense minister, Minoru Kihara, back from talks at Washington with the American defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, said Japan’s air self-defense force would soon be renamed the air and space self-defense force.

“With the advent of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, manned and unmanned aircraft, and hypersonic missiles, the threats to our country from the air are becoming more diverse, complex and advanced,” he said, Japan will buy another 400 American Tomahawk missiles while “strengthening cooperation with the United States” and building up for war in space.

More immediately, Chinese claims to the South China Sea have approached crisis level in the wake of two collisions between Chinese and Philippine ships near disputed islands and shoals. Countering President Biden’s promise to defend the Philippines, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing said Washington had “no right to intervene.”

For now, though, China seems to want to tamp down the flames in those troubled waters. China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, at Washington to see Secretary Blinken, said America and China, by engaging in dialogue, should return “to the track of healthy, stable and sustainable development.”