To Bill Emmott, envisioning Asia's future is no great trick. Economically, it's a matter of time travel: fly from Tokyo to Beijing, then on to Delhi; reverse the trip to fly into the future. Better yet, save your money, because Emmott has already been there and done the math. India = China fifteen years ago, while China = Japan thirty years ago.

While it's not exactly news that Japan is considered more advanced than China, who is more advanced than India, the thoroughness with which Emmott divines the future from the past gives a Westerner much food for thought. As editor of the Economist from 1993 to 2006, Emmott has catered to those who rely on star-rated information. In "Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India, and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade", he offers a banquet of incisive punditry, hoping readers leave the table with a new perspective of Asia, not of disparate countries isolated in their struggles to catch up, but of a cohesive juggernaut whose trials and exploits can be predicted by the equation mentioned earlier.

Emmott points to the World Bank as a perfect example of Western myopia in action. Its seminal 1993 report on the rising tigers of East Asia fawned on Malaysia while failing to mention China. In contrition, it made China the darling of its 2006 report, but left India in the corner. Emmott blames this muddling on the patronizing paradigm of East Asia as coolie struggling to fit in to a global scheme of rich Western crafting. Realizing that China and India have not only broken their bondsman status but have also become lords of their own interdependent manors is crucial to playing the game of realpolitik in the near future.

OK, one may think, we're playing ball with China, but India? Aren't we supposed to be moving our mega manufactories to other yellow countries under China's chicken breast - Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia? Look west, whitey, advises Emmott, to an India which has in the past few years increased investment from a quarter to more than a third of its GDP, investment funded largely by domestic capital that will not be shaken by the winds of foreign exchange crisis. An India whose eroding rupee will suppress labor costs, as will its endless horde of largely uneducated youngsters. No wonder Emmott calls for doing away with the old symbol of India's economy, a scooter with a cow blocking its path, and replacing it with the 2500-dollar Tata Nano.

As for the cooling fires of the Chinese dragon, Emmott tells a little story, a story of a country that got a global reputation making cheap crap. A country called the dirtiest developing nation in the world, with steel plants and chemical concerns befouling air and sea in the face of toothless regulations. A country called Japan. Throughout the 60s Japan played the role we now think of as China's over the past decade. Then came Nixon's destabilization of the dollar, the OPEC oil shock close on its heels. Thus began Japan's exodus up-market, spurred along by key environmental reforms. With China grappling soaring inflation and oil at 130 bucks a barrel, Emmott believes her current industrial drama will most likely resolve itself in a third act reprising Japan's.

Not that the happy ending lasted forever in the Land of the Rising Sun. Shuffling around in a saki-stupor since its bubble burst in 90, Japan is just now starting to shake off its doldrums, clearing its books of underperforming loans and getting reacquainted with inflation for the first time in a decade. Emmott sees further promise in Japan's growing part-time and non-contract labor force, but prescribes a surge of productivity and a regimen of New Economy, ala America in the 90s, to remain the little island that casts a big shadow, still the world's second largest, economically.

All this begs the question of Emmot's new book title. Don't expect a U.S.-Russia style missile waving contest any time soon, he advises. Rather, understand that China and India are no longer little piggies, and that their jostling at the teats of the global economy will raise more and more mud for media to rake. The former is an 800 pound gorilla with the esteem issues of a bullied pencil-neck. As such, other powers now look to India as a big billion-plus friend to make Mighty Joe Young think twice about rampaging down Main Street. The U.S. has wisely left India out of its nuclear non-proliferation gerrymandering, and Japan is starting to treat the country as a star sumo rather than a third-world towel boy. Meanwhile China, with a few millennia's experience in balancing power, is deftly cultivating Africa as the multi-national, super ally diamond in the rough it is, rather than the tattered beggar at the feast the West has so long taken it for.

In essence, Emmott does not conjure the concept of rivalry to suggest a gauntlet thrown between Japan, China, and India. Instead, rivalry is a prism through which the countries are now starting to view each other, rather than as fellow subordinates in a pecking order which has seen the Western Allies ruling the roost since World War II. Emmott holds that we'd do well to forget the recent past, and get used to a future resonant of a time seven centuries ago, when the world turned on giant Asian axles, leaving little European cogs spinning.