Despite the threatening sounds and the build-up on the borders here's where I lay my bets: the possibility of war can be discounted. The odds are against it as is the American frame of mind. Sackcloth and ashes be my dress should this turn out to be wrong - as, given the nature of this business, firm predictions often turn out to be.

With Pakistan already moving against the mechanics of Kashmiri 'jihad' - a necessary fallout of the war against the Taliban - what more does India want? Unless of course, seeing that it is on a roll, India wants to rub Pakistan's nose in the dust. In which case it will be tempting the furies and making as gross a miscalculation as Pakistan occasionally has done in the past.

The attack on the Lok Sabha was a bad affair, regardless of who the perpetrators were. But this incident has already been overtaken by the extent of the Indian response. At issue now are the war clouds on the horizon rather than the actual cause of this threatening change in climate. All the same, even though the Shivaji mood in India is riding high, I'll stick to my wager: the bluster and thunderclaps punctuating this sub-continental winter are not the heralds of a fourth Indo-Pak war. (My sackcloth, meanwhile, remains close at hand.)

War may be too serious a business to be left to generals. But war in the hands of Mr Advani and Mr Fernandes, not to speak of Major (rtd) Jaswant Singh, can never be a laughing matter. For India it should be sufficient consolation that the era of 'jihad' in Kashmir is effectively over. This is the logic of the American 'war on terror'. Going beyond this, as I have already said, is playing with volcanic matter.

India is being foolish. It is not realizing that far from remaining committed to the state fundamentalism of the Zia years, Pakistan under Musharraf is shedding its fundamentalist skin. We saw this happening in Afghanistan. We are seeing this now in Kashmir. By stepping too far, India is only stiffening Pakistani attitudes. No one in Pakistan wants war. But no one likes the thought of being pushed around by India.

But enough of India. We have worries beyond it to think of. Indeed, if the current tensions emphasize anything, it is the danger of part-timism which afflicts Pakistan. As troops mass on the border can we afford a part-time army chief and a part-time president?

Why can't we get the hang of Plato's advice in the Republic: to each his own? A cobbler should look to the mending of shoes, a physician to healing, a soldier to bearing arms and guardian-philosophers (Plato's description of the wise politician) to the running of the state. At the heart of our national predicament lies the failure to heed this principle.

If even in the arcana of love two-timing is a bad thing, in war and peace, or war and politics, part-timing is a prescription for disaster. As proof we can recount many examples from our own history.

Ayub Khan, playing both warrior and statesman, got himself into a war he had no idea how to finish or indeed any idea of why he had embarked upon it in the first place.

Yahya Khan was president, C-in-C, fiddling Nero and presiding deity of a stable of high-living ladies (the envy of any man with a heart) all at the same time. Under his stewardship the army was defeated in the east and the country torn apart. The people of Bangladesh are wrong to revere Shaikh Mujib as Bangabandhu. The true fathers of their country are Ayub Khan (whose policies alienated East Pakistan) and Yahya Khan, Mujib being merely the instrument of a pre-ordained destiny.

Zia-ul-Haq was president, army chief and pope all rolled into one. What Pakistan is now trying to discard is his legacy. He was the father of Pakistani fundamentalism, an ideology a world removed from Jinnah's thoughts. Yahya looked tough but was a weak-minded sybarite. Zia flashed a broad smile but behind it lurked a steel-tipped Lucifer. It's hard to decide who did more harm to the country.

Curse civilian leaders as much as we may, their legacy is not half as blighted as that of their military counterparts. Only Bhutto among politicians stands as tall a figure as Pakistan's generals, both in his successes and failures. But his principal failure was one of omission. Because of his undoubted (and indeed outstanding) ability, he more than anyone else had a chance to make the transition from praetorianism to democracy irreversible. But he remained every inch an autocrat, a praetor in civilian clothing, and at last fell at the hands of the same tradition.

How many hats does President Musharraf wear? He is president, chief executive, supreme commander, army commander, more than Sattar his own foreign minister and more than anyone else around him his own expounder of political philosophy. How many hats can anyone wear?

The time President Musharraf spends as chief executive is time taken from his duties as army chief. A man constantly balancing two roles is a man split in the middle and unless he be Caesar or Napoleon ends up being half a soldier and half a statesman.

Has not Faiz in a poignant poem (kuch ishq kiya, kuch kaam kiya) lamented the condition of the person who can devote himself entirely neither to love nor to work? In both fields such a person remains a master of unfinished business.

Not only has President Musharraf to face in different directions at the same time, the military, because of the isolationist course pursued over the last two years, is on a promontory by itself, bereft of institutional links with any other section of the population. President Musharraf claims the support of the 'silent majority'. Where does this phantom body exist?

If a crisis threatens, a standard drill, honed to perfection by now, is followed. To a motley collection of clerics, pundits and shiftless politicians invitations are issued from the Chief Executive's Secretariat. Over assorted nuts and tea the president then converses with these representatives of the people. This is the military government's idea of a national dialogue.

General Musharraf is his own master and will listen only to Colin Powell or Secretary Rumsfeld. There is not much of an impression that anyone in Pakistan can make on him. Or indeed on the college of cardinals which is the corps commanders' conference. But in his hands rests so much. It is up to him to be serious about democracy and not play with the Constitution - a liberty given to him, lest we forget, by none other than the Supreme Court.

If, however, the military's know-all attitude remains supreme, Pakistan will not break out of its present mould, pushing the goal of a stable polity still further away.

A more subtle danger also threatens. Once the sounds of war die down, President Musharraf's position will be securer not weaker. Correspondingly, his ability to play dice with the Constitution or the country's politics will be enhanced.

So the big question for Pakistan is not what India will do - the danger from that quarter, and here I am banging no war-drums of my own, holds no terrors for us - but what a strengthened president will do once the storm clouds disappear. Truly, he has it in his power to decide which road to take. If self-preservation is his guiding principle, we are lost. Another ten years of a quasi-military dispensation is the last thing Pakistan needs.

But if, heeding the lessons of the past, the military realizes the importance of minding its own business, then it is fair to say our luck will finally have dawned.