India, Sept. 11 -- A recent video of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a huddle, smiling and joking with the Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Russia's Vladimir Putin set off alarms in the United States and other western capitals. Once the images went viral, politicians and media pundits concluded that the US President Donald Trump's punitive tariff drove India, which was nurtured by America for the past three decades as a counterweight to China's aggressive rise in the Indo-Pacific, into the arms of its Enemy No. 1. Trump agreed, "Looks like we have lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest China," he posted on

Truth Social.

This is only half the story. While Trump's unreasonable tariff of 50 per cent on Indian exports did help bu...