China factor will come in..... They have invested hugely on pakistan, and China's regional power ambitions or their stature in world will be at stake..... So they will not allow it to happen..... The problem with support of US is, they still need pakistan for the success in Afghanistan, let us be honest, with out pakistan support afghanistan cannot be won, even with the support pakistan will ensure that US doesnt win the war there.... So US is also stuck and will not support us beyond a point.... they will support us if we are or our actions are in their national interest.......
I feel there is not much we can do with pakistan, unless we are ready for an all out war.... If not it will be a hot and cold relationship forever....
What you and many other members are stating is only a partial view through the prism of Indo Pak ties with possibly a filter named the US . While we have come to terms with the status quo as it does exist between India & Pakistan , what has complicated matters for us is the deepening of the strategic ties between China & Pak manifest most clearly in the CPEC .
Improvement in economic ties vide the CPEC will not act as a moderating influence on PA going by past experiences ( please refer to the background and economic conditions of India & Pakistan before the 1965 war ) . It has been the avowed aim of the PA to inveigle their patron nation in their war against us. The US & KSA didn't exactly rise upto the bait & expectations of the PA in the past . We don't know to what extent the Chinese could be baited by the PA into fighting their war with us . Frankly , the Chinese would prefer the Pakistanis fight their own war but with their economic interests at stake , it certainly exposes them to a certain amount of risk which they aren't prepared or comfortable facing , but which they'd be forced to confront .
Under these circumstances , with these facts on the table , what are our options ?
Quite a lot , frankly without getting into a full scale war . Quite a few have been mentioned in the posts above .Let me try and enumerate them -
Continue the pressure on the border increasing/decreasing the intensity with QRT( so called surgical strikes ) assaults thrown in across the LoC every now & then .
Apart from forcing Pakistan to commit more troops to guard their Eastern frontiers , they'd be forced to leave their Western front lightly protected and constrict their WoT vide Operation Radd ul Fasaad , Zarb e Khasb , etc .
Increase cooperation with the Afghanistan Army , the NDS , etc instigating the TTP to undertake more operations of a spectacular / devastating nature within PAKISTAN. ( We always need to be careful to involve intermediaries like the NDS or other such sources for these operations to ensure plausible deniability )
One doesn't know the actual quantum of resources committed by the Chinese irrespective of what the Chinese & Pakistani press say . There's a degree of wariness in both camps - in the Pakistani one , the nature of Chinese debt traps is making them wary . On the Chinese side - the growing instability in Pakistan , lack of a central authority , increasing trust being reposed in the PA as not only the guardian but also arbiter of Pakistan's destiny to the extent that they've openly gone on record seeking active participation of the PA in clearing bottlenecks and inviting more active participation of the PA in the CPEC .
Our job would be to sow more dissension and increase the gulf between the civilian and the military leadership.
Step up our support to the freedom fighters in Baluchistan .
Step up support to marginalised groups in Sind like the MQM.
Reach out to the IDP through intermediaries in Afghanistan in FATA & KPK and provide them with material support to carry out insurrectionary activity .
Try to fund common cause with Iran . The more Pakistan tries to maintain equidistance between Iran & KSA , the more they'd be subject to pulls in all directions given their dire financial conditions . The fault lines thus exposed are the foundations we build on .
Continue building up pressure through diplomatic efforts on Pakistan in bilateral & multilateral meetings , different fora across the world , etc.
This helps in moulding public and government opinions .
Continue CO operation in such fora as FATF with like minded countries in imposing sanctions and hence a cost on Pakistan .
Finally , we may , just may , have the need to mount our own version of Kargil ,ever so rarely - a sort of salami slicing as it were to impose costs on the PA.
This is a proxy war being waged as a LIC situation . A full fledged war or even a localised conflict has the possibility ruin our calculations and slow down our growth .
However that has to balanced against a larger more holistic picture - that of the deepening of the China Pak strategic calculus and the presence of NW in Pakistan . It's the latter two which has the West led by the US to refocus attention on Pakistan . Its something which impacts our strategic calculations in a bad way too.
One can be sure , that the US cannot afford to let China dominate strategic choke points like the Bab el Mendheb or the Straits of Hormuz a la the SCS , ECS which has seen China establish it's superiority .
How and what this portends for Pakistan will be answered in a short time - in a time span of the next 3-5 years or less .