There’s plenty of hedging afoot in Asia as a result. A nascent alignment is underway between India and Japan. Cooperation between South Korea and India has begun on a range of issues, including security. There are even signs of a thaw in the Japan-Russia relationship. Abe, who has met Putin five times since becoming prime minister a little over a year ago, visited Moscow last April, the first official trip a Japanese prime minister in a decade, and went to Sochi this month to attend the Winter Olympics. Putin has scheduled a visit to Japan this fall, the first by a Russian president in eight years. Moscow and Tokyo are reportedly exploring solutions to their dispute over the Hoppo Ryodo/South Kuril Islands and trying to make headway toward signing a still-absent post-war peace treaty. They have also begun ministerial discussions covering regional security and even agreed to start joint naval exercises. Each of these developments in the region is influenced in part by the parties’ perceptions of China’s expanding power.

The uncertainty in East Asia stems from what in the theory of international relations is referred to a “power transition.” When there are seismic shifts in the distribution of power among major powers, ascendant states are tempted to take risks because of the confidence created by their increased strength and status. Leaders in the states that have hitherto been dominant feel compelled to demonstrate their country’s continuing superiority and relevance in order to counter critics at home and to reassure friends and deter adversaries abroad. Lesser powers are forced to rethink their strategies. The net result is the emergence of an environment hospitable to uncertainty and fear, the escalation of crises, misperceptions relating to adversaries’ intentions, strength, and resolve, and a preoccupation with safeguarding standing and prestige.

If this describes the situation in East Asia today, there are good reasons to be concerned about the polemics, appeals to historic grievances, and demonizing of current leaders in which Beijing and Tokyo are engaged. Leaders on both sides are mobilizing nationalism, invoking history in support of their territorial claims and the righteousness of their positions, and promoting pernicious stereotypes. They may hope that generating support at home will help them convince the adversary of their determination and resolve. What’s more likely is that the tit-for-tat trading of insults and accusations will increase the risk of overreaction during crisis and decrease the room for the compromises needed to contain them. Once leaders start campaigns to vilify a putative opponent, especially one with which there is a history of conflict, the harder it becomes for them to back down in a crisis without losing political capital at home. This is particularly true in the age of the Internet and social media, when citizens can, with unprecedented speed and in unprecedented numbers, get into the game of demonizing foreign antagonists and demanding that their leaders stand tall and not give ground. The nationalism that leaders fanned with the intention of using it as a resource can turn out to be a liability if, on the home front, compromise comes to be seen not as sagacity but as cowardice, even treachery.

Devotees of deterrence might retort that leaders, no matter their bravado, are attuned to strategic realities and won’t act recklessly if they anticipate that the costs will exceed the prospective gains. Fair enough; but the “if” is pivotal” here. Power transitions can produce an odd combination of hubris, bravado, fear, misperception, and a preoccupation with reputation, which inhibits clear thinking and increases the probability of erroneous judgment. East Asia may be particularly vulnerable to this pathology. The region lacks multilateral institutions within which diplomats can hammer out agreements that help restrain heated rhetoric, create procedures for preventing and managing crises, produce confidence-building measures, and enable third-party mediation.

None of this means that war between China and Japan is imminent: it isn’t. Still, leaders in both countries are increasing the odds of minor confrontations and reducing the maneuvering room that they will have to defuse them. Better that they end the freewheeling war of words and back-and-forth shows of strength. Beijing doubtless fears the emergence of a Japan that embarks on a substantial and sustained drive to increase its military power; but its muscle-flexing and anti-Japanese PR campaigns could well produce the dreaded denouement. Besides, the concern over China’s growing power assertiveness is not limited to Japan, or even to countries with which Beijing has disputes over maritime boundaries and islands.

Japan’s leaders have, if anything, a bigger challenge. Taking a lesson from Germany, they should encourage a truthful reckoning with the 1930s and 1940s instead of sticking to the default response, which has been to deny or diminish when it comes, say, the 1937-38 Nanking Massacre or the “comfort women” controversy. Tokyo must also take steps to ensure that school textbooks provide an honest account of the 1930s and 1940s rather than skipping, glossing over, or rationalizing uncomfortable truths. There is an extensive, variegated body of Japanese scholarship on hot button wartime subjects such as the Nanking Massacre. What has been lacking is a commitment by the government to engage in an honest inquiry into the past. To be fair, Japan’s leaders are hardly unique in denying and distorting controversial periods and episodes in their nation’s history; but given the strategic circumstances emerging in East Asia, that is a poor excuse for inaction.

What remains to be seen is whether Beijing and Tokyo will be able to take these steps, given that the vilification and the sanctimoniousness appear to have assumed lives of their own.

Rajan Menon is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science at the City College of New York/City University of New York, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the author, most recently, of The End of Alliances (Oxford University Press, 2007).