New Delhi, June 13 -- Narendra Modi left for France on Friday carrying the kind of diplomatic luggage no advance team can manage. Three Indian sailors are dead, killed this week by American strikes in the Gulf of Oman. A trade deal that was supposed to anchor the reset has stalled over tariff threats Delhi calls baseless. And the man Modi needs to sit across from, Donald Trump, had the entire G7 summit pushed back by a day so it would not fall on his birthday.

American tariffs, an India-Pakistan military confrontation that Washington handled badly from Delhi's perspective, and now a body count that has turned a trade dispute personal.

The sailor deaths landed in the middle of what was supposed to be a managed de-escalation. Secretary of...