India, Dec. 7 -- Measured by the metric of tightrope walks, it was a virtuoso performance. Prime Minister Narendra Modi finessed Russian President Vladimir Putin's State visit to India and showed the world that the old Russia-India partnership not only had a lot of life left in it but was perhaps headed for even better days.

This was, at one level, a routine visit - the 23rd in a series of annual summits between the two countries. But, given the current global juncture, this was no ordinary summit. Putin's aim was to show the world, especially onlookers in the West, that he remained a global leader who was received with great warmth and ceremony by one of the major world powers. Modi's goal was to reassert India's strategic autonomy in a...