Yet again, China, the Middle Kingdom of miscalculations, has showcased its propensity for aggressive posturing in the South China Sea. No, we're not talking about Chinese ships intentionally bumping two Philippine vessels out to resupply the BRP Sierra Madre at Ayungin Shoal. That's so yesterday.

The latest in Beijing's not-so-subtle saber-rattling and reckless escapades in the SCS involved one of its fighter jets buzzing a lumbering United States Air Force B-52 bomber over international airspace, further escalating tensions in the volatile region.

A video released by the US showed the Chinese J-11 plane, its pilot probably drunk with a potent cocktail of bravado and years of indoctrination, approaching the B-52 with such reckless disregard for safety that it came within a mere 10 feet of colliding with the US bomber.

Ten feet! That's how close nuclear superpowers America and China came to an international incident, just the latest in Beijing's dozens of bullying operations in the South China Sea, including in areas that overlap our own West Philippine Sea.

History has taught us the dangers of playing chicken as the skirmishes in the South China Sea could easily ignite a larger conflict — a conflagration — as many wars had been started from seemingly small provocations. How about refreshing our collective memory?

Take the American Civil War; it kicked off with a mere hiccup in time, the Battle of Fort Sumter, which turned into a four-year bloodbath that claimed over 600,000 lives. See how a small fort shelling started a brawl between the slave-owning Cotton States (the South) and Abe Lincoln's federal government and the rest of the North.

Then there's World War I, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination led to a series of diplomatic crises. Before the smoke of war settled, over 16 million people — Hungarians, Russians, Serbians, French and British, among others —  lay dead.

How about the few skirmishes at the north-south border that eventually escalated into the three-year Korean War, costing more than three million lives? Vietnam, the Falklands, the Russo-Japanese War, the Seven Years War, the Spanish-American War, and World War II — most started from minor incidents that spiraled out of control.