Asia's three giants will shape its and the world's strategic destiny. India has a rugged and resilient democracy; Japan is a stable and mature democracy; and China is seeking to promote market-led economic growth within tight political centralism under Communist Party control.

India's legitimacy is rooted in a political model of liberal democracy that is unique in human history in scale and poverty; China's is in economic success without precedent in scale and pace; and Japan's is in the combination of political democracy, wealth creation and per capita income unique in Asia. China uses political control and the heavy hand of the state to forestall and suppress challenges and uprisings; India uses procrastination and indecisiveness to ride out and exhaust most insurgencies along with an oppressive security presence in Kashmir; and Japan is largely free of such challenges.

India, conquered and colonized by the West, was humiliated militarily by China; China, neither defeated nor colonized, was attacked, invaded and humiliated by Japan as well as Western powers; and Japan is a nonnuclear power that was defeated by being atom-bombed. Japan is the wealthiest of the three but its economic future seemingly lies in yesterday; China is the most vibrantly growing economy today; but, provided governance and policy issues are handled right, demographic trends of a growing working and consumer cohort could favor India as tomorrow's economic success story.

A healthy alliance with the United States is insurance for Japan against a future China threat, while good relations with China are a hedge against an unreliable U.S. ally in the future.

Three possible scenarios may be postulated for East Asia:

-- Sino-Japanese rivalry, with the United States as the balancer, which deters China and restrains Japan.

-- Sino-U.S. bipolarity, with China dominating the mainland, the United States controlling the seas and Japan essentially playing second fiddle.

-- Sino-U.S. rivalry, with Japan acting as the conciliator.

The future of U.S. troops and bases in Japan has become unexpectedly contentious. About 20,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Okinawa Prefecture and another 20,000 elsewhere in or off the coast of Japan. In 2006, after a decade of negotiations, the two countries agreed to relocate 8,000 U.S. marines from Okinawa to Guam, and another 2,000 marines from the Futenma air base in the city of Ginowan to less-populated Nago on Okinawa's northern coast. The Liberal Democratic Party lost last year's election. The new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama of the Democratic Party of Japan, campaigned on the promise of removing the base from Okinawa Prefecture and perhaps from Japan. He has resisted honoring the previous government's commitment to reduce and reposition U.S. troops in Okinawa Prefecture and Nago's new mayor says they are not welcome in his city.

The remarkable postwar recovery of Japan was underwritten by the U.S. security guarantee. However, must gratitude for the past translate into a willingness to host U.S. bases and soldiers permanently? They are resented for the symbolism of the victorious power occupying the defeated one, for the continuing dilution of Japanese sovereignty that keeps U.S. soldiers outside the reach of Japanese law, and for periodic incidents involving (often drunken) U.S. soldiers and Japanese civilians (especially women).

By insisting on the base agreement as a test of Japan's commitment to the alliance, Washington risks a rupture of the latter along with an end to a resident military presence in Japan: a mistake it made with New Zealand in the 1980s over nuclear ship visits. If the alliance is in the security interests of both countries, the partnership is worth preserving through mutual accommodation and adjustment. If Washington believes it is the provider and Japan the consumer of security, that the United States is an essential balancer against a fast-rising China and a still-threatening North Korea, then the occupation mentality will continue to corrode the relationship.

The generation now in power in Tokyo has dimmed memories of World War II, diminished guilt for it and no internalized sense of dependence on the United States after the war. Temperamentally no longer submissive, the new leaders are unmoved by U.S. demands that fealty to Washington should take priority over promises to Japanese voters. Their efforts to rebalance the alliance reflect the loosening of these familiar emotional moorings in postwar Japanese foreign policy and an effort to free Tokyo of a competing historical guilt over what happened in and to Okinawa.

Brad Glosserman and Tomoko Tsunoda, among others, have pointed out that a powerful driver of Japan's social and security policy will be its changing demographic profile. Its population will shrink by a third to under 90 million by 2055. Those aged 65 and over will double to more than 40 percent. Still rich, Japan will live off its wealth but not create new wealth. Over the next 15 years household wealth will return to levels of 15 years ago. Inevitably, this will cut into Japan's ability to pursue a muscular military or an activist foreign policy and cost it relative status in Asia and the world. But by the same token, it should lessen the demonization of Japan and diminish Japan-centered regional tensions.

Americans unsettled by Tokyo's questioning of the operationalization of the alliance should brush up on the history of the storm of protests unleashed across Japan when the treaty was put before the Diet for ratification in 1960. Tokyo's proposal for an East Asian community built around China and Japan that excludes the United States has also ruffled U.S. sensibility. Washington should not conclude that the problems are due to an inexperienced, immature and populist government that needs some sharp lessons in realism.

The base dispute is a lightning rod for differences over how to manage a political landscape in Japan and geostrategic landscape in East Asia that are both changing. Tokyo is recalibrating its historical relationships with its traditional protector and traditional rival. China seems intent on making that extra effort to present the friendlier face to nudge the process along of counterbalancing enduring U.S. influence. Yet there is also lingering suspicion of China and a resistance-cum-resentment to ceding alpha status to it.

Can Japan achieve political reforms and economic recovery? Will it become a normal country whose industrial muscle translates into military power and diplomatic influence? Will it become a nuclear power? Can it say no sometimes to Washington or will it remain an ATM serving U.S. global policy?

The most technologically advanced, richest and best educated country in Asia cannot be written out. If Asia turns to cooperation, Japanese money will be required to underwrite the institutional arrangements and agreed deliverables. If Asia turns to Sino-U.S. confrontation and conflict, Japan will anchor any U.S. forward strategy for East Asia. If Japan is ignored, if Washington attempts to use its relationship with China to shape the environment into which Japan fades quietly into the sunset, Tokyo can play spoiler-cum-saboteur for most regional initiatives and even embrace the Bomb.

Many question marks, many drags, an aging and shrinking population, a stagnant and contracting economy and a political culture that puts governments in office but not in power--these are not quite the ingredients to instill confidence in a revived Japan. Yet history offers a caution against writing off Japan too hastily. It has shown superhuman ability to emerge triumphant from grave crises through mass mobilization of the collective identity, at extraordinary personal and national cost and effort, in astonishingly short bursts of time.