“People exposed within half a mile of the Little Boy fireball were seared to bundles of smoking black char in a fraction of a second as their internal organs boiled away. The small black bundles now stuck to the streets and bridges and sidewalks of Hiroshima numbered in the thousands. At the same instant birds ignited in midair. Mosquitoes and flies, squirrels, family pets crackled and were gone.”

When the US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, told an audience in Singapore recently that the US would not allow “coercion and bullying” of its allies by China, he must have been counting on a lack of historical knowledge (or a tolerance for hypocrisy) in his audience. Bullying and coercion, including threatened and actual military attacks, are not something new; they have been part of US policy in Asia (and elsewhere) for two centuries.

In a major escalation of war games near China, the armed forces of the Philippines and US troops are holding the largest annual Balikatan military exercises in history. From 11 to 28 April, 12,200 US military personnel, 5,400 Philippine forces and 111 Australian troops are taking part in the drills. Balikatan—meaning “shoulder-to-shoulder” in Tagalog, the national language—will be the first time Philippine and US forces engage in live-fire exercises at sea.

The single biggest contributor to the threat of an inter-imperialist conflict in East or South-East Asia is the US military’s aggressive forward positioning as it tries to maintain regional dominance over China. Any specific threat to Australia emanating from this situation will primarily be a function of Canberra partnering with Washington in a war against Beijing.