In response to a suicide bombing in Kashmir that killed 40 Indian troops last month, the Indian Air Force struck targets in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.

I imagine that many readers around the world today would read that sentence the way that readers 105 years ago would have read the sentence: “A Bosnian separatist shot the presumptive heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in Sarajevo today.” Many would have been saddened by the news or shocked at the outburst of violence and the senseless death . . . and then went about their day. After all, that was way over there in the Balkans. “How could that effect us?”

Similarly, many might be tempted to write off the latest news from Kashmir—the disputed territory between India and Pakistan—as just another regrettable flare-up of violence. But it is not. As two nuclear-armed nations with deep-seated hostilities sitting at the crossroads of a new geopolitical order, India and Pakistan represent the Balkans of our day. We ignore the events there at our own peril.

So let’s take a closer look at what just happened (or didn’t happen) between India and Pakistan, and what it means in the bigger scheme of things.

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