Armageddon in 2014?

Which is more dangerous to world peace, the Middle East, or Northeast Asia? Thomas Lifson writes at American Thinker,

While I have assumed for decades that the Middle East had the greatest potential to ignite a catastrophic world war, Japan, China, and the two Koreas are offering some serious competition in the volatility sphere.

Japan's Prime Minister Abe has seriously ticked off China and the Koreas by visiting Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, where the souls of the war dead are believed to rest, including not just the Imperial warriors who inflicted incredible suffering on Japan's neighbors, but also the war criminals.

Meanwhile, the Japanese public is fairly strongly behind Abe, who is seen as restoring some kind of honor and pride to Japan, which has groveled before the outside world since its defeat in WW II, or as the Japanese call it, The Pacific War (so as to distinguish it from Japan's successful military forays into Asia - it was only drawing America into the war that ruined things for Japan). For the Japanese, obligation to one's ancestors who made sacrifices is a central cultural value. Despite the unfortunate results, those who died in the cause of the Emperor are seen as having made a noble sacrifice. That is why Abe felt so strongly as to make a Yasukuni visit on the first anniversary of taking office - a kind of moral force multiplier.

Japan is suffering from a kind of spiritual crisis for the last two decades, as its economy has stagnated, and its younger generation is declining to reproduce. The population is falling by 200,000 people a year, resulting in shrinking markets. In such an environment, reverting to tradition, and honoring those who sacrificed is a kind of comfort that has wide appeal.

Lifson points out that in North Korea, China, and Japan,

we have domestic political dynamics at work in three countries that push each regime toward bluster and confrontation. And a power-mad, callow, and insecure dictator armed with nukes. Throw in deep historical grudges still clung to with passion, and you have a recipe for Armageddon.

Oh yeah, and then there are the mad mullahs who could launch a war that would block the Persian Gulf and cut off oil supplies to East Asia, which would lead to extreme privation at the least, and over a matter of months, probably starvation. 2014 could end up being one of those years like 1914, where the world changes forever.