•China and India both have a sense of manifest destiny in this emerging world, but Japan is somewhat unexpected — one tends to think of it as a place that’s had its moment.

Yes, I remind people that Japan still exists! It continues to wield power and influence as the world’s second largest economy, and I think its slide will be reversed soon. Japan led the ‘flying geese pattern’ of export-led industrial development; very high levels of investment and gradually, lower-end industries shifting to other countries as living standards in Japan rose. China has soared on the same path, largely. India, of course, follows the model though unlike Japan and China, the government is less of a clear guiding force for the economy. Japan has to deal with an ageing population and rising inequality — because the poor have gotten poorer, unlike American inequality. But those wages will rise again. It’s a natural survival instinct, and the fear of China has really spurred the political reform process and led it to make overtures towards India. India is Japan’s largest recipient of foreign aid, it has pumped in money for Delhi’s Metro, the industrial corridor, they want India included in East Asia groupings. It’s all part of balance of power tactics. And it’s also in India’s interests to expand technology and trade links, and military ties with Japan, given its reluctance to appear too close to the US.

•How could internal politics in India or China disrupt this narrative?

Of course, politics could completely put a landmine in this process, it is after all about responding to accidental events. While I am optimistic that there will be no reversal for globalisation, there is still that lurking ghost of a chance. It needn’t be domestic politics; it could be a regional flashpoint that could stir up things. China’s leadership must accommodate the demands for transparency and pluralism, while India’s economy is weakened by bad regional relations.

•You quote an Indian official saying ‘Both India and China think the future belongs to us. We can’t both be right.’ Though you rebut it, it’s a commonly held claim that our ambitions are too close for comfort.

India tends to be on the defensive in its dealings with China, as we saw with Tibet and Myanmar recently. But once it acquires more confidence with greater economic prowess, and military modernisation, that could change. India’s real vulnerability is its bad relations with all its neighbours, which China can exploit. I’d guess that China’s economic growth will probably plateau in about 15 years to about five per cent, while India’s will keep growing at 10 per cent.

•And how do these challengers affect the US’s top dog status? You mention that the US could end up playing a stabilising role in Asian rivalries...

The story about American decline is way overdone. Of course the debacle in Iraq was a big setback, as is the credit crunch, but the US is bound to bounce back. Like Madeleine Albright said, it is ‘the indispensable nation’, and we’re not living in a post-American world. India’s ties with the US will endure, no matter what administration. I would think that now that India has emerged as a significant force in Asia, the US will step back from Asia’s internal matters, as it should. Much like it has expressed its support for the EU.

•What about the EU, won’t it be pivotal to this emerging world order, as some argue? And what about the BRIC 2050 scenario?

Of course the EU is and will be a powerful economic force, but it won’t be a coherent influence on the rest of the world. Parag Khanna gets it wrong, I think, when he projects the EU, the US and China as the Big Three. The EU is not going to make clear decisions, that’s the nature of the beast. It’s an aggregate of 27 countries and still counting. It’s an economic force, mainly. And I don’t think one can make these large predictions about the grand future.

•You write that ‘if India and China develop as Japan did, it would destroy the planet’. How will environmental responsibility be shared in the next decade?

I think the new American president, whoever it may be, would do well to start by committing the US to making real cuts in greenhouse emissions. It might be possible to then bind China into undertaking a similar exercise — and China in turn can use this external obligation to bring about a change it desperately needs. That’s less true of India, which is in a much earlier state of economic development, it would be harder to persuade India into accepting a higher-cost path. There’s a stronger case for financial incentives and technological transfers to enable India to take a greener route. So it’s in India’s interests to differentiate itself from China instead of being side-by-side on these issues.