Early Wednesday morning, India carried out air strikes in Pakistan’s Punjab province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. In a statement, New Delhi said they targeted terrorist infrastructure and that the strikes were in retaliation for the Apr. 22 attack that killed 26 tourists in India-administered Kashmir, which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan. As I wrote for TIME several days ago, some type of Indian military action was widely expected.

While New Delhi described the operation as non-escalatory, this is clearly not how Pakistan—which denies any involvement in the Apr. 22 attack—viewed them. It denounced the strikes, the most intense in Pakistan since a 1971 conflict, as an “act of war.” It claimed they hit civilian targets, including a mosque, and........

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