When we signed up for loyal service with the Americans last September -- a month evil for Pakistan as much as for the United States--we prided ourselves on our cleverness, thinking we had outsmarted India and assured our security. As our American friends (friends?) pile up the pressure on us and talk sweetly to India nothing looks more foolish than those happy assumptions.

Our present troubles too are largely traceable to that period for the stance we adopted in September led us, willy-nilly, to turn meltdown-under-pressure into an art form. Our weakness has encouraged Indian truculence and even inspired a geriatric prime minister to flights of poetry at our expense.

One day he threatens Pakistan with decisive war. The next day he says, "...the sky is clear. But sometimes lightening can strike even when the sky is clear."

Pakistan has been through hard times before but seldom has it had to put up with so much patronizing.

Thank God then for belated wisdom. To judge by Gen Musharraf's address on Monday evening our retreat has ended. The message delivered was simple: no blowing the bugles of war but no succumbing to Indian threats. If war was imposed on us we would give a befitting response. Much too late these words of resolve but better late than never.

No one in Pakistan wants war. Certainly not in this heat. But there is no great appetite for being pushed around either. It is hard to say what ordinary Pakistanis are sick of more: India's superior attitude or the wilting-under-pressure of their ruling generals. Is it for this, they ask, that they maintain such a large army?

India and the world must understand one thing. The Pakistani nation is capable of great foolishness. It can endure a lot but it will not take kindly to Indian threats. That simply is not in its chemistry. Peaceniks and western interlocutors reading lectures to Pakistan about doing more to meet Indian demands should feed this into their computers.

To what a pass have we been brought by knocking knees. We are being spoken to in the language reserved for Arafat. Just as the onus for everything in the occupied territories is on the Palestinians, none on the Israelis, the onus for preserving the peace in the subcontinent is on Pakistan. We must satisfy Indian concerns. This is what our western friends are telling us. India is under no obligation to solve the mess it has created for itself in Kashmir.

Is it Pakistan's fault that India has had a revolt on its hands in Kashmir since 1989? Pakistan took advantage of this situation but did not invent or manufacture it, an undertaking beyond its powers. That achievement was India's alone. For full 17 years after the signing of the Shimla Agreement India had the chance, the historic chance, to win over the Kashmiri people and soften their bitterness towards Indian rule. If India could not do this, if it still cannot do it, how is Pakistan to blame?

None of this justifies "cross-border infiltration", the bogey with which Pakistan is being hammered these days. But it also does not justify India's self-righteousness. If in Kashmir the only problem was cross-border infiltration, the Kashmir revolt would have died a long time ago. The real problem there is the alienation of the Kashmiri people. When next moved to poetry Mr Vajpayee should try looking at this problem.

Agreed, Pakistan's cause has been ill-served by its military rulers. Convinced of their infallibility, they have made a mess of so many things. On the diplomatic front we stand isolated. The American embrace has had fatal consequences, making Pakistan more susceptible to external pressure. Long ago, before misery overtook Afghanistan, we used to speak of an Afghan-Indian nutcracker. We now face an American-Indian nutcracker. Such have been the wages of military innocence.

But enough of wailing. The spirit of Vichy will get us nowhere. This is the time to discover some backbone, not to flog despair. For better or worse, the Marshal Stalin in charge of the nation's destiny in this grim hour is Gen Musharraf. However much we may dislike the face of military rule, behind him at this juncture the nation has to rally. To our political quarrels we can return when all this is over.

Some good has already come from this crisis. Shedding some of his arrogance, Gen Musharraf has apologized, albeit partially, for the absurdities of his referendum. He has also renewed his invitation to those political parties, representing the national mainstream, which had earlier refused to meet him. Whatever their reservations, these parties should now come forward and meet the general. The last thing we can afford at this juncture is the picture of a divided nation.

To be sure, Gen Musharraf can also do more for national unity. He can, for instance, avoid any talk of amending the Constitution or setting up a national security council as long as the standoff with India lasts. These theories represent the ugly side of military rule and should be kept to one side for the time being. Who knows wisdom may prevail and we are rid of them altogether when we come out of this crisis.

The general must also look a bit to his rhetoric. In times such as these, words should be measured carefully. It is no good saying as he did in Azad Kashmir the other day that Pakistan would unleash a 'storm' if India crossed the Line of Control. If India crosses the LoC we should be looking to giving it a bloody nose and throwing its forces back. This should suffice. Poetic imagery we can leave to Mr Vajpayee.

When Philip of Macedon (Alexander's father) threatened the people of Sparta with the message, "If I enter Laconia (the old name for Sparta and from whence comes the word laconic), you shall be exterminated", they wrote back the one word "If". They did not speak of unleashing storms.

After Hitler's war on Poland in 1939, Stalin tried to emulate Hitler's example by attacking Finland. Eventually, through sheer weight of numbers, the Red Army prevailed but not before the Finnish army, under Marshal Mannerheim, had given it a bloody nose. In 1979 China attacked Vietnam hoping to teach it a lesson. The People's Liberation Army too got a very bloody nose. We should be studying these examples carefully while leaving storms and tempests, and the underlying threat of nuclear war, alone.

So far events have conspired to put the squeeze on Pakistan, obliging Pakistan to make a virtue of conciliation. But with Pakistan finally saying thus far and no more, the heat shifts to India as it considers the dilemma confronting it: make good on its threats or back off from its rhetoric. It's a tough corner India has boxed itself into.

Louder than the threat of war, however, is the sound of subcontinental irony. For long Pakistan was the belligerent power in the subcontinent, its people subscribing to the belief that one Muslim was equal in combat to ten Hindus. In the order of battle for the 1965 war it was actually put down in black and white that as a rule Hindu morale cracked under a few sharp blows. We have learned our lessons in realism the hard way. As war-talk grips India, it seems as if India is now travelling down the same road.

If we hold our nerves and do not panic, and Gen Musharraf resists the temptation of another flip-flop (a crucial precondition), we should be all right. Going to war is more difficult than holding out the threat of war.

Meanwhile let us also account for another problem. The chatter of war and punishment flows easiest and sounds loudest in war and map rooms made comfortable by air-conditioning. If it were up to the soldiers on the front or the villagers who have fled their homes on both sides of the border, we might not be living through these crazy times.