The India-Pakistan dialogue could be restructured in a way that allows them to engage each other in a formal but unstructured strategic political dialogue which focuses beyond immediate disputes and problems.

Under the deal that was worked out in the back channel, the LoC would have remained a de facto and not a de jure border, something that would keep alive Pakistan's irredentist claims over Jammu and Kashmir.

If Pakistan succumbs to American pressure, it will continue to be engaged in a long war of attrition on its western borders. If Pakistan resists American pressure, it will be isolated in the world and the international community will have to fall back upon India to put a firewall around the AfPak region.

Unless Baloch nationalists get their act together in pursuit of ‘achievable nationhood’, it will be only a matter of time before this latest upsurge in Balochistan will be brutally crushed.

It would appear that for the moment at least the TINA factor operates in favour of the Zardari/Gilani combine especially if they continue to occupy their offices without wielding any real power.

Not only will Pakistan have to take on all sorts of Pakistani Taliban, it will also have to end the network of jihadists in provinces like Punjab and Sindh if it really wants to get rid of the Islamist menace.

While Pakistan could still try and develop a taste for grass by rejecting US assistance, there is no way it can economically sustain the fight against the Islamist insurgency without external assistance.

In a reality check to the wild celebrations that broke out in Pakistan after the Supreme Court declared ‘illegal and unconstitutional’ the emergency that was imposed by General Pervez Musharraf on 3rd November 2007, former Prime Minister Shujaat Hussain reminded his compatriots that “two trucks and a jeep” rolling out of the military headquarters in Rawalpindi is all it takes to disrupt democratic rule in the country.

Diplomatic and political naivety, coupled with enormous pressure from a clueless America helplessly flailing its superpower muscle in the Af-Pak region, and of course that old disease that all Indian Prime Ministers’ suffer from – a sense of manifest destiny to normalise relations with Pakistan – have led to a Joint Statement by the Indian and Pakistani prime ministers in Sharm-el-Sheikh which is full of concessions, compromises and climb-downs by India.