Crisis management system for Japan and China

Sir, One might very well ask how the world’s second and third largest economies have come to the brink of war over two and a half square miles of uninhabited islets and rocks in the East China Sea – a dispute that increasingly threatens to draw in the US. Martin Wolf’s comparison, in “China must not copy the Kaiser’s errors” (Comment, December 4), of the tense situation over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands with the outbreak of the first world war – whose centennial is rapidly approaching – is appropriate. Barbara Tuchman, author of the classic Guns of August – a book that reputedly enabled President John F. Kennedy to prevent the Cuban missile crisis from escalating into a nuclear exchange between the US and USSR – describes in great detail how “foolish monarchs, diplomats, and generals blundered into a war nobody wanted”. So, what is the difference between the 1914 and 1962 crises?
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