India, Feb. 15 -- This author has been watching Munich long enough to recognise the mood before the speeches even begin. The chandeliers glow, the coffee is strong, the delegations circulate with rehearsed gravity and somewhere between the first bilateral and the second panel, the word "crisis" may be whispered with increasing conviction. Well, this year it can be said that there was a fear amongst some of the delegates as they assembled for one of the side events of which there are countless throughout the four days of MSC.

Last year, this author had written that the penny had finally dropped in the Bayerischer Hof. Washington had changed the script. The Trump-Vance administration was no longer prepared to subsidise Europe's strategic c...