India, April 16 -- Last week, foreign secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra visited Washington. True to his generally reticent style, Kwatra didn't engage with the media, didn't post on X (it was through the social media handles of his American interlocutors that observers got a glimpse of his engagements), and the Embassy of India issued a brief press release at the very end of his visit that said little.

But it would be a mistake to interpret this generally low-key public messaging as a reflection of the substance itself. Conversations with people familiar with the visit indicate that Kwatra's quiet foray was an important, timely, and successful intervention. It helped both India and the US share their assessments of the current moment in globa...