Exhortation

Maybe this is all bogus - maybe the Crisis is an example of apophenia, finding patterns in random events. Trying to find an indicator of it ahead of time may be just another hopeless quest, like transmutation or weather prediction. Although the latter isn’t too difficult, at a rough level: In three months it will be hotter than now, three months after that it will be MUCH hotter, three months after that it will cool a lot. 

Perhaps, like the weather, the Crisis is predictable, although maybe not enough to be helpful. We may be able to discern this future event in only vague ways. Clearly, though, it will have to be something where leaders can say "We must attack X" and the response is thunderous applause. Japan, Dixie, the Redcoats... if that speech can't be imagined, it is hard to see it becoming the Crisis. People need to care enough about the issue to support it, there must be supporters able to describe the issue eloquently, it must be possible to describe it as Us versus Them.

A cynic might say this also implies that X can be defeated, or at least that must be the perception. A future of certain painful death without victory will not ever inspire applause of a sufficiently thunderous nature. While Japan and Germany were mighty, the U.S.A. had been preparing in numerous ways for a possible showdown. The Union certainly saw that they had the upper hand over the Confederacy - and the Confederacy came close enough to victory that their hopes could be seen as not excessively optimistic. 

Who could we fight? Who can we beat? The other important question would probably be: Who don’t we like? Answer all three, and you’ll probably know where the Crisis will go.