India, Sept. 2 -- Hours after the curtains fell on the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin, the strategic consequences continued to be hotly debated in America. Visuals of Prime Minister Narendra Modi attending the summit alongside Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping drew strong reactions, mostly of shock and disappointment, from across America's political and foreign policy establishment.

"It was a shame to see Modi getting in bed, as a leader of the biggest democracy in the world, with the two biggest authoritarians in the world in Putin and Xi Jinping. That doesn't make any sense. I'm not sure what he's thinking particularly since India has been in a cold war, and sometimes a hot war, with China for de...