"The turn for his worse along the border happened before he came into office." Markey explained. "So that's part of why it's difficult to tell this story."

He added, though, that Nodi's hardline approach "certainly has the potential to escalate more conflict."

Surprisingly, or maybe counterintuitively, Markey also said that Modi's rise to power played in Pakistan as something hopeful given that the last prime minister from the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, Atal Vajpayee, "extended what he called 'a hand of friendship' to Pakistan."

Pakistan's enthusiasm may be premature. "What's sort of odd about this is: A hawk is a hawk," Markey said. "And Modi's a hawk."

As The New York Times noted, one precipitating factor in the recent crisis was the cancellation of high-level Indian-Pakistani talks earlier this summer.

"That dates back to the decision by the Pakistani government to meet with Kashmiri separatists, which they considered to be a 'business-as-usual' approach and Modi's government declared that this is unacceptable and called off the foreign secretary talks," Markey said. "This was a downgrading in the relationship from the earlier, more hopeful approach that Modi seemed to be taking when he first got into office and had invited all the heads of state from around the region including [Pakistani] Prime Minister Sharif."

He added that the two premiers didn't meet on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly and were critical of each other in their speeches. And, as Professor Brahma Chellaney told Reuters, there is the matter of the escalating violence: "What we are seeing on the border is unusual in terms of its ferocity and the sudden eruption in violence."

India continues to blame Pakistan for using artillery as cover to allow the crossing of militants over into India while Pakistan says the Indian shooting was unprovoked. Despite this dispute, the language dispatched by the two governments about the violence remains relatively demure.

As Hari Kumar writes, the Pakistani government says it “lodged strong protest” against Indian action through diplomatic channels and the Indian army said an “equal effective response of unprovoked firing was given” in response to Pakistani fire, hardly a Patton speech. Markey says that this is a good sign.

"If it plays into a diplomatic dynamic in which Modi is a taking a harder line and the Pakistani army is not inclined to back down," he said, then, "you can begin to get an escalatory spiral."

Given that the 2003 ceasefire has more or less held, despite its shares of incidents (including the highly deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks), it may be early for talk of nuclear war.

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