India, Jan. 29 -- When Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, described in New Delhi the recently concluded India-EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) as the "mother of all deals," she wasn't engaging in diplomatic hyperbole. The agreement, finalised after nearly two decades of laborious negotiations, is undoubtedly monumental. It brings together two global economic giants representing a quarter of the global GDP and a market of over two billion people. Yet, to view this purely as a triumph of sound economics would be to miss the forest for the trees.

This deal is as much a geopolitical maneuver as it is an economic one, arriving at a moment when the global order is being reshaped by the return of protectionism, erosion of ...