India and Pakistan are now locked in their most expansive military conflict in decades. The two nuclear-armed states have been exchanging gunfire and shelling across their borders while also deploying missiles and drones, causing civilian casualties on both sides. The latest flash point between the two countries escalated on Wednesday after India attacked what it says were terrorist sites in Pakistan, in retaliation for a militant attack on civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Are there any routes for de-escalation? On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Tanvi Madan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and the author of Fateful Triangle: How China Shaped U.S.-India Relations During the Cold War. Watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page, or follow the FP Live podcast. What follows here is a condensed and edited transcript.

India and Pakistan are now locked in their most expansive military conflict in decades. The two nuclear-armed states have been exchanging gunfire and shelling across their borders while also deploying missiles and drones, causing civilian casualties on both sides. The latest flash point between the two countries escalated on Wednesday after India attacked what it says were terrorist sites in Pakistan, in retaliation for a militant attack on civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Are there any routes for de-escalation? On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Tanvi Madan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and the author of Fateful Triangle: How China Shaped U.S.-India Relations During the Cold War. Watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page, or follow the FP Live podcast. What follows here is a condensed and edited transcript.

Ravi Agrawal: So Tanvi, let’s just start with April 22 as the flash point that began this new conflict. What do we know about what actually happened?

Tanvi Madan: What we know is multiple attackers targeted civilians—most of whom were tourists, and many on their honeymoons—visiting Pahalgam. What we also know is that there was a religious or communal dimension to it; the attackers targeted people on the basis of religion. This was the worst terrorist attack on civilians since the Mumbai attacks in 2008. And these are some of the reasons why the anger within India over this attack is quite high. There is anger in Kashmir as well, with some Kashmiris seeing it as an attempt to disrupt their economy. And because the victims came from over a dozen Indian states, there was kind of a national outpouring.

RA: This national anger led to a clear sense that India would respond. There’s a history of some recent escalation here, right?

TM: The Kashmir dispute itself goes back to the founding of India and Pakistan, as they currently exist, after the partition of the subcontinent by the British in 1947. But more recently, since the 1990s, India has accused Pakistan not only of using its military, but also using insurgents and terrorists to press their claims on Kashmir. Until 2016, you had not seen a military response from India, even under pressure after the 2008 Mumbai attacks. India showed considerable restraint. Then in 2016, the Modi government, which had come to power in 2014, said that it was going to respond militarily to a terrorist attack where a number of soldiers were killed. India conducted surgical strikes, sending soldiers from Indian-controlled Kashmir to the part Pakistan holds and conducted operations there. In 2019, there was another incident similarly with an attack on soldiers as well. You saw India respond again militarily, this time with airstrikes in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and into the rest of the country.

RA: And then we fast-forward to this week. On May 7, after threatening to do so, India launches a fairly serious set of coordinated attacks fairly deep into Pakistan.

TM: Because of those 2016 and 2019 responses, there was an expectation that India would respond militarily. So India conducted military strikes within Pakistan on what they described in a government and military press conference as terrorist infrastructure. What was different from the 2019 responses is that India struck many more locations. The Indian side said nine. The Pakistanis, I think, admitted a few less, but nonetheless did acknowledge these strikes.

But it was also different because........

© Foreign Policy