India, Sept. 6 -- Any serious jolt in an individual's life should ideally lead to a period of reflection, a reassessment of one's capabilities and limitations, a meditation on the way ahead. So it is for nations.

In recent years, a close India-US relationship had become the central tenet of India's foreign policy. The jolt delivered to that perception by US President Donald Trump's irrational aggression is a serious one. It ranks right up with some memorable jolts of similar voltage: the Chinese betrayal and aggression in 1962, the US Seventh Fleet sailing into the Bay of Bengal in 1971, and the furious landslide of "a ton of bricks" in the shape of sanctions post the 1998 nuclear tests.

But those episodes, however unacceptable, could b...