Pakistan and India have not normalised since Mumbai 2008. They have moved from the stage of no talks to a resumption of talks about talks to the present state of heightened tension after the terrorist attack on Indian soldiers in Uri. As these lines are being written, India claims to have carried out surgical strikes across the Line of Control, something the Pakistani side has been consistently denying.

The Saarc summit has been postponed with three other countries in the region also putting their weight behind India’s resolve to isolate Pakistan. A few days earlier, India had suspended the biannual Indus water commissioners meeting, putting into jeopardy the ever-functional Indus Water Treaty with Prime Minister Modi stating "blood and water can’t flow together".

The last two actions indicated that India had moved ahead of the strategic restraint policy it had been following and would now try non-military means to punish Pakistan. This was being read as an implementation of the Doval Doctrine, put in place by India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval who is said to be quite close to the prime minister.

Doval’s strategy for Pakistan, China and Kashmir has been gleaned from his public speeches. For Pakistan, he has suggested a defensive offence mode instead of just defensive and offensive modes: "In defensive offence we start working on the vulnerabilities of Pakistan -- it can be economic, internal security, political, its isolation internationally by exposing their terrorist activities. It can be defeating their policies in Afghanistan -- making it difficult for them to manage internal political balance or internal security."

Whatever the origin of these non-military suggestions to penalise Pakistan were, the military options are already being explored. The preceding weeks have been marked by war-mongering on both sides, talking not just of nuclear and conventional wars but also of a war mutually waged against poverty and illiteracy.

The Modi government has been under a lot of pressure to do something against Pakistan, and not let these consistent terrorist attacks on its soil go unpunished. Despite the initial statements indicating Uri to be a handiwork of the Pakistani state, India is not being asked to punish Pakistan for Uri -- Pakistan must be dealt with, they say, for everything it did not do after Mumbai.

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There is, in the words of Michael Krepon, the "ineffectual judicial proceedings against Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi" that "are an enduring embarrassment" and "he has become the symbol of Rawalpindi’s past misdeeds". Nor is India too happy with Hafiz Saeed being at large and let free to spew hatred against India.

This disjunction between Rawalpindi and Islamabad had forced India to literally lose all interest in Pakistan. There was always a pattern. Before Mumbai, Lahore Declaration was followed by Kargil. The Mumbai attacks were immediately preceded by the then President Asif Ali Zardari urging "opening the Kashmir issue to public debate in India and Pakistan" and calling for "taking the bilateral relations to a new level" and forming an economic union between the two countries.

The pattern has continued ever since. Every time there is a peace overture by the civilian governments, a bloody incident throws spanner in the works. More recently, Modi’s surprise visit to Pakistan -- the first in many years after even the Congress prime minister refused to come to Pakistan -- was followed by Pathankot.

Pathankot, however, did not become hot enough because Pakistan cooperated in terms of intelligence-sharing and volunteered to help in a joint investigation. Pakistan was absolved of any wrong-doing in Pathankot but not so in Uri. Uri happened just before Pakistan’s prime minister was to address the UN General Assembly and everybody knew what he was going to tell the world -- expose Indian atrocities in Kashmir where there is a new surge for independence since July, particularly after the killing of the young Kashmiri leader Burhan Wani by the Indian forces.

That is why Pakistan too has insisted Uri was India’s inside job. It did so because the current wave of ‘Kashmir Intifada’ is believed to be solely indigenous. Some sources even say that Kashmiris have begged Pakistan to not interfere physically and let them fight on their own. But, as Michael Krepon writes in his most recent piece, "And yet, the moral imperative of associating with the Kashmir cause and the instinct to inflame India’s Achilles heel have long been staples of Pakistan’s existence".

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Having already nominated 22 parliamentarians as special envoys to highlight the human rights violations by India in occupied Kashmir in different parts of the world, this was Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s second chance to let go of the ‘strategic restraint’ at the UNGA. And he did so emphatically.

This is not the staunch-advocate-of-peace Nawaz Sharif we know who would put Kashmir on the back-burner and get ahead with trade.

Instead, any idea of mutual trade and the ensuing benefits has been turned on its head not just by Pakistan and India but Afghanistan too, the three potential beneficiaries of the Afghanistan Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement. India is trying to get to the Central Asian markets through the Chabahar port in Iran, Pakistan is banking on the China Pakistan Economic Corridor and Afghanistan has its own plans.

With no vested interest developed in mutual trade, there is obviously nothing to stop the two nuclear states from engaging in actual war if there is no diplomatic solution sought from both sides. Does Pakistan need an India to isolate it when it has done everything it could to itself do that?

Analysts have pointed out how at the time of the attack on Indian parliament in 2001 and even in 2008, Pakistan was a key strategic partner with the US and how it doesn’t have the US by its side anymore. It may have tried to give a spin to its joint military exercises with Russia at this crucial time, the fact remains it is not on good terms with any of its neighbours except for China. It has not been able to convince the world of Indian involvement in Balochistan and every time it has tried to raise the Kashmir issue, it has hurt both Kashmir and itself.

Pakistan must step forward to lessen the tension and seek a diplomatic solution of the current standoff. The postponement of Saarc summit should not be allowed to turn into a cancellation. This might be the best platform to bring Pakistan’s foreign policy back on the right track.