Early Wednesday morning, India carried out air strikes in Pakistan’s Punjab province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. In a press release, New Delhi said they focused terrorist infrastructure and that the strikes had been 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 a number of days in the past, some sort of Indian army motion was extensively anticipated.

Whereas New Delhi described the operation as non-escalatory, that is clearly not how Pakistan—which denies any involvement within the Apr. 22 assault—considered them. It denounced the strikes, probably the most intense in Pakistan since a 1971 battle, as an “act of struggle.” It claimed they hit civilian targets, together with a mosque, and killed not less than 31 folks.

Pakistan instantly launched a response, together with intense shelling on India’s facet of the de facto border, which India’s military mentioned killed not less than 15 civilians. Pakistan additionally claims to have downed a number of Indian jets in India-administered Kashmir (Indian officers acknowledged the crash of three Indian planes, however they are saying the explanations aren’t clear).

Escalation dangers are extraordinarily excessive, given the size of hostilities and the darkish moods in each capitals. With India having hit Punjab—Pakistan’s most populous and affluent province, and residential to the capital and army headquarters—Pakistan could choose to strike targets past India-administered Kashmir. That then raises the chance of further Indian strikes on Pakistan, together with army websites—and particularly if the preliminary Pakistani response, as claimed by Islamabad, went after Indian army targets. Underneath such situations, it will be arduous to not fear in regards to the threat of nuclear escalation.

With the disaster evolving so rapidly, hypothesis about potential subsequent strikes and countermoves has restricted utility. The higher query to ask is what’s going to it take to get to de-escalation. Many key capitals—Washington, London, Riyadh, Doha, Abu Dhabi—are on pleasant phrases with each India and Pakistan and might be working the telephones within the coming hours and days to induce the 2 sides to return again from the brink. However that may solely be efficient if they’ll persuade New Delhi and Islamabad that their pursuits are finest served by choosing off-ramps.

Throughout the previous few India-Pakistan crises, in 2016 and 2019, de-escalation got here comparatively rapidly. However the scale and depth of hostilities was not almost as excessive as now. Finally, for the 2 sides to conform to wind down, they’ll want to have the ability to declare a victory that enables them to avoid wasting face.

India may consider its preliminary strikes represent that victory. Its said aim was to degrade the militant infrastructure that it claims facilitated the Kashmir assault. Its army operations did hit areas, significantly in Punjab, recognized to deal with the 2 most potent anti-India jihadist teams, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). (CBS Information reportedly obtained a press release from JeM chief Masood Azhar claiming India’s strikes killed 10 of his relations and 4 “shut associates.” Whereas in 2019, India took warmth from Pakistan and unbiased analysts who argued that strikes in Khyber-Pakhtunkwa province meant to hit JeM targets as a substitute merely hit bushes.) New Delhi could really feel it might level to the size of as we speak’s strikes, and their location, to justify this to the Indian public as mission completed.