The most likely outcome is that the latest deadly flare-up between India and Pakistan will end relatively soon: In the little over 25 years that the two countries have possessed nuclear weapons, both have become very good at engaging in tense and violent confrontations without them escalating to threaten the entire planet.

When he announced the cross-border missile strikes that began what India is calling “Operation Sindoor,” Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri described his country’s actions as “measured, non-escalatory, proportionate, and responsible” Neither side has yet sent ground troops into the other’s territory, which would be the clearest sign yet of a wider war.

On Wednesday, India launched missile attacks into Pakistan in response to a brutal massacre of tourists in April by militants that the Indian government alleges have links to the Pakistani state. Since then, the two countries have been trading artillery and drone strikes across the border, with around four dozen deaths reported so far.

All the same, in its scale and intensity, and without an obvious off-ramp for the combatants, some analysts are describing the current conflict as the most dangerous episode of violence between India and Pakistan since the Kargil War of 1999, in which hundreds of troops were killed on both sides.

Just because the two sides don’t want the crisis to escalate doesn’t mean it won’t anyway.

The road to war

Since majority-Hindu India and majority-Muslim Pakistan were partitioned in 1947, they have fought four major wars and a number of smaller skirmishes. The primary source of tension between the two has been the disputed region of Kashmir, which since 1972 has been divided by an unofficial border known as the Line of Control.

Even in peaceful times, alleged violations of the line and cross-border firing have been relatively common. India also accuses Pakistan of sponsoring a long-running Islamist insurgency in the parts of Kashmir it controls — which Pakistan denies, although it does openly support autonomy for the region.

The stakes of the conflict were raised by the introduction of nuclear weapons, which India first tested in 1974 and Pakistan acquired in 1998. The year after Pakistan got its nukes, the Kargil War began when Pakistani fighters covertly crossed the Line of Control and took up positions in Indian-administered Kashmir.

The war, which lasted around two months, is often held up as the primary counterexample to the idea of “nuclear peace” — the concept that nuclear weapons make war less likely because of the risk of escalation.

Pakistan and India demonstrated that two nuclear powers can fight a war, albeit a short and relatively limited one, using only conventional weapons. Some political scientists have used India and Pakistan’s case to demonstrate what’s known as the “

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