Great news. Any time two nuclear-armed countries go to war, the potential for greater disaster dials up to about 11. After several days of war, including artillery and drone exchanges, India and Pakistan have reached a cease-fire brokered by the US:

Over the past 48 hours, @VP Vance and I have engaged with senior Indian and Pakistani officials, including Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Shehbaz Sharif, External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir, and National Security Advisors Ajit…

— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) May 10, 2025

... and National Security Advisors Ajit Doval and Asim Malik.

I am pleased to announce the Governments of India and Pakistan have agreed to an immediate ceasefire and to start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site.

We commend Prime Ministers Modi and Sharif on their wisdom, prudence, and statesmanship in choosing the path of peace.

Donald Trump hailed the agreement, while also noting the US role in bringing the brief war to a conclusion:

After a long night of talks mediated by the United States, I am pleased to announce that India and Pakistan have agreed to a FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE. Congratulations to both Countries on using Common Sense and Great Intelligence. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

This gives Marco Rubio his first major diplomatic victory as Secretary of State, and it is a doozy. India and Pakistan have fought a number of skirmishes over the disputed Kashmir region, and terrorists often attack with Kashmir as its premise. The most well-known of these groups is Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani radical-Islamist group that got some of its funding from Osama bin Laden. They have wanted a war of conquest to integrate Kashmir and Jammu into Pakistan. The government in Islamabad claim that L-e-T has disbanded, but that claim isn't exactly credible, especially considering the Pakistani footsie-playing with radical Islamists in the region. 

Another group called "the Resistance Front," which claimed credit for last week's massacre of 26 Hindu men on picnic, appears to either be L-e-T or its successor organization:

One of the deadliest attacks the group orchestrated was a 2008 slaughter in Mumbai, India’s financial hub, during which more than 160 people were killed. Nearly a dozen gunmen arrived on boats and waged days of carnage, including taking hostages at a major hotel. One of the attackers was captured alive, and much of the account of the attack’s ties to Pakistan came from his confessions. He was sentenced in India in 2010 and executed in 2012.

Pakistan has confirmed Lashkar-e-Taiba links to past violence in India but says that the group was outlawed and disbanded long ago. The group’s founder, Hafiz Saeed, is free despite brief periods of detention, and Indian officials say that the group continues its activities through cover organization and offshoots, such as the Resistance Front.

India's counterattack after that massacre targeted known L-e-T locations, as well as another group that had committed terrorism in India:

Jaish-e-Mohammed, the second group that Indian officials said they had targeted in their attacks, has long had a major hand in the militancy in Kashmir. But its activities have not been limited to there.

The group’s founder, Masood Azhar, was imprisoned in India in the 1990s for militant activity in Kashmir but was released as part of a hostage deal in 1999. Hijackers took an Indian Airlines flight to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and demanded the release of Mr. Azhar and other militants in return for freeing the more than 150 passengers they were holding.

Jaish-e-Mohammed is accused of multiple deadly attacks in Kashmir, including the 2019 bombing of an Indian military convoy that brought the two countries into a brief conflict. It was also behind a deadly attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001.

The Indian government has had enough of Pakistani terrorists, in other words, and might have been difficult to dissuade from escalating the war further to deal with them. The Pakistanis might similarly have decided to fight the war over the disputed territories now rather than later. It must have taken some effort to get either side to stop. Or perhaps just the use of some leverage:

The prominent role that the Trump administration is claiming in brokering a cessation of military hostilities between India and Pakistan comes as both countries have been bargaining with Washington over economic matters. On Friday, Pakistan was asking the International Monetary Fund for the extension of a vital loan worth billions of dollars. The United States has an outsize role in making such decisions. And India is negotiating a trade deal with the Trump administration after President Trump’s threat to impose punitive tariffs.

Maybe those tariffs came in handy after all. Not all economic power is purely limited to that sphere.

On the other hand, perhaps both Pakistan and India wanted a way out of the fight without having to throw in the towel. You know you're out on a limb when even the Taliban think you're both too extreme and violent:

Afghanistan's Taliban government warned India and Pakistan on Wednesday that further escalation was not "in the interest of the region" after they exchanged artillery fire along their contested frontier.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on the social media platform X that "it urges both sides to exercise restraint and resolve their issues through dialogue and diplomacy".

Of course, this is only a cease-fire. Pakistan and India have secular hostility and disputes going all the way back to the British partition and independence, and religious disputes going back a millennia or more. Perhaps stepping this close to the brink will have sobered both governments up enough to at least settle the secular issues and remind Pakistan especially of the necessity to deal with its radical-Islamist problems. In the meantime, though, Rubio's credibility and the leverage from American trade will both be on the rise.