I was simply asking that frankly rhetorical question because of your "it may have started that way" to the Pakistani line (which no one buys) that Kashmir is the only issue between India and Pakistan., and solving Kashmir (of course, gifting it to Pakistan) is going to earn us a thousand years of peace.
Peace with Pakistan will only come when Pakistan can no longer wage war.
Till they can, they will.
I partially agree with you. One of the ways of achieving peace in sub-continent is dividing Pakistan into two or three parts without nuclear teeth and no ability to defend itself. Such country or countries will know their place and will avoid confrontation with the big brother in the region. Pretty much a couple of Bangladeshs on your western border.
Achieving this however is next to impossible right now without risk of turning the region into nuclear wasteland.
See the fact that we are enemies has something to do with Kashmir but that is not the only reason. We are a much smaller country compared to India which has aspirations to become a global power, and rightly so considering its size. So India wants to play the big brother part in the region for a start, it does not necessarily mean it wants to gobble up our lands, it just want us to align our strategic interests with it. For example we should give them access to Afghanistan and stop influencing that country and supporting the elements that are in conflict with Indian interests.
Now it seems only logical that as a smaller country we should actually do that and prosper. But here is the catch, the sole reason that we created a separate state for us was that we did not want to live under Hindu hegemony once the British left. Now accepting India as the big brother in the region will negate the very basis of our existence. We just can't accept it.
And because our population, size and above all economy is much smaller than India, we consider India as an existential threat. We are not an existential threat to you, just a nuisance if we don't take nukes into consideration.
The real danger to region is that as the Indian economy and global influence increase and the disparity between conventional forces of our two states increase further, we in Pakistan will start relying on unconventional means more and more. On the other hand, the urge to put pesky little Pakistan in its place in New Delhi will increase further. This is a dangerous combination.
So if we continue on the same path, there is a possibility that you'll be able to disarm us, not without a conflict though that I assure you. Or we will turn the South Asia into nuclear wasteland and blow your aspirations of becoming a global power in that mushroom along with ourselves of course.
The path to peace in the region, the way I see it, is if Pakistani economy improves dramatically. Let me explain how. Currently it is 8 times smaller to that of India, hence a 5 times smaller defense budget even when we spend a bigger percentage of our GDP on defense. There is potential in our economy to grow at a much higher pace than it currently is. If we attain double digit growth for a couple of decades we will be able to reduce the gap to a much more manageable 4 times. That is pretty much the difference between you and Chinese.
What this does is that it will change our stance against each other from enemy to rival. See the Dokalam episode, neither the Chinese nor the Indians wanted it to grow into a full fledged conflict. Their trade still flourish after that episode.
We will have a healthy defense budget and hence will rely less on unconventional means, and it will also make India less of an existential threat. India will start seeing us a rival, not that pesky little neighbor who should know its place and we will have peace in the region.
P.S There was a time after our two countries came into existence that we in Pakistan were ready to accept India as big brother and work with it. Yes even after 48 war and before we got into Seato and Cento we wanted to have mutual defense pact with India as we had problems with Chinese on our northern border just like Indians and we wanted to stay neutral in the cold war. But our diplomatic efforts were rebuked by Nehru by saying mutual defense against Whom, well he saw in 62 what we were talking about. This forced us to get into not a very favorable border agreement with China. Then hawks like Bhutto got into the mix and things went south.
