By any historical measure, India is reluctant to bow to coercion. Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister, championed the cause of nonalignment, and his successors have sworn by variants of strategic autonomy. Yet recently India has swallowed more provocations and offered more concessions to China than at any point since the two countries’ 1962 border war.

In the last six months, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar have all visited China. Each trip culminated in a pledge to normalize relations, even amid Chinese provocations. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is preparing for his own trip to China in September, seemingly completing a progression of Indian officials accepting Chinese terms.

By any historical measure, India is reluctant to bow to coercion. Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister, championed the cause of nonalignment, and his successors have sworn by variants of strategic autonomy. Yet recently India has swallowed more provocations and offered more concessions to China than at any point since the two countries’ 1962 border war.

In the last six months, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar have all visited China. Each trip culminated in a pledge to normalize relations, even amid Chinese provocations. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is preparing for his own trip to China in September, seemingly completing a progression of Indian officials accepting Chinese terms.

The trigger for this shift is not a sudden loss of national nerve. It is the return of U.S. President Donald Trump, whose “America First” diplomacy has stripped India of strategic cover. In the months since Trump took office, China reportedly provided Pakistan with military intelligence, withdrew engineers from factories in India, continued to restrict access to Indian soldiers on the disputed border in Ladakh, and officially renamed sites in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Meanwhile, India has maintained its silence and avoided confrontation to preserve normalization talks. On the........

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