This morning, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced 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.” Rubio said that the ceasefire came about after he and Vice President JD Vance had 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 Doval and Asim Malik.

Earlier in the week, the Morning Jolt quoted the analysis of  the Hudson Institute’s Aparna Pande, who contended this latest clash is part of a recurring pattern between the two countries — relatively small-scale but intense provocations and retaliations that ramp up tensions, brinksmanship that grabs the attention of the international community, a period of increased diplomatic pressure on the two governments, followed by deescalation — because as much as these two countries hate and fear each other, neither side wants a military conflict to escalate into all-out war.

The world has a lot of ongoing violent crises and tensions going on right now; it’s good to see one of them calming, at least a bit, for the near future.

I recall that on Rubio’s first day on the job, right after meeting with U.S. State Department employees and sending his first cable, he held his first diplomatic meeting with his counterparts from “the Quad” — Australian foreign minister Penny Wong, Indian minister of external affairs Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and Japanese foreign minister Takeshi Iwaya.