Despite the niceties Trump has articulated with regard to Pakistan’s leaders, it must be abundantly clear that this is no longer working. Within his transactional world view, Trump would not hesitate to say a few nice things after an incident – the Coleman-Boyle rescue – that made him look good.

But Trump is the archetypical opportunist, patently unpredictable, and is led overwhelmingly by his own imaginings of what he thinks is good for America. His views on Pakistan may be modified by a total dismantling of terrorist safe havens in Pakistan and Pakistani proxies targeting Afghanistan (J&K is unlikely to hold his interest), but anything less will bring him back to the reality of Pakistan sheltering “the same organisations that try every single day to kill our people.” The Americans have long been fools to trust the Pakistanis; but the Pakistanis would be infinitely more foolish to trust Donald Trump.

Where does this leave New Delhi? Frankly, on its own, as usual. For too long, India has been trying to get others to fight its battles, relying on occasional diplomatic flashes to embarrass Islamabad, or to rally other powers to its own point of view on Pakistan-backed terrorism against India. The world couldn’t care less. Decades of Western duplicity on J&K should have provided sufficient evidence of this reality. If the language of the West – and the US – is changing now, it is only because of a growing fear of the international linkages of terrorism.

The Indo-Pak conundrum, however, will remain principally a bilateral problem, and the proxy war in J&K will have to be fought and won by India overwhelmingly on its own capacities and capabilities. This will require long-term strategies which have been conspicuous by their absence over the very long term, and are still nowhere in evidence.