I understand your points, but the case with Pakistan shows that significant changes must be imposed from the outside, and not from within. The internal issues are slowly building to an explosive head, but periodic interventions from the outside release the pressure valves a bit to give some relief, given that the world would rather pay up than deal with the collapse of a third world country in a volatile region with nuclear weapons.
The solutions are not durable, so your point of change must come inevitably can be accepted, with the proviso that the timing remains firmly in the future, and likely to be extended periodically as I have described above.
I dunno man, world seems to be changing how it goes about w.r.t Pakistan.
(West) Pakistan of the 90s was arguably the high water mark w.r.t India.
India was facing forex bankruptcy, the Kashmir high level insurgency had established full flow, N.E insurgencies looking very bad, Khalistan movement was at its peak arguably, Indian foreign relations were facing huge obstacles given USSR collapse, Babri Mosque, rise of fractitious internal politics as congress party started to collapse....I could keep going on and on about this era and its severe challenges for India....compared to Pakistan which was riding out its picked model and momentum lot better.
The point is India got enough of its act together when one could have easily predicted another fate and not sound unreasonable at all.
Now about 30 years later, we are looking at very different picture. No doubt a huge amount remains to be done and tackled, the issues are immense as ever for India.
But it is not anywhere close to stagnant/stasis like Pakistan's model just like you have noted.
It is the relevance of India to the world and to Pakistan that itself will add a pressure to Pakistan's establishment. They cannot continue as normal eternally, you understand just how much Pakistani regular people follow India (in whatever positive or negative manner, it does occupy lot of their attention, interest and fear).
Pakistan simply does not have an extreme insular model like North Korea where brandishing nuclear weapons or a military is enough foreign policy...given it has not developed what North Korea has for political purpose internally to base this on.
Over time periods I am talking about, such technologies also inevitably need massive fiscal resources to stay relevant on...or is it your contention in the next century (and probably much sooner than that), we will still be talking about nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles?....given what economic sizes will be then (and costs to them to support Pakistan with drip feed of some high value deterrence tech of the time) if Pakistan has chosen to not reform and grow by coming to suitable co-existence psychology w.r.t India in its establishment?
Pakistan's diaspora also means it is something more like Iran (with its theocratic regime-bureaucracy that is seemingly stuck there too) ....it just cannot insulate itself from the information flows and references like North Korea can.
This is why Pakistan's economic stagnation and non-access to western loans (that China is not interested to replace) mounting up is something that needs to be watched and closely this decade as to its effects on pakistan establishments narrative entrenchment.
So I just do not think anything is guaranteed. I said we can be justified regarding certain things maybe for our lifetimes, but our lifetimes are very short all things considered.
But somethings can happen really quickly too, that were unforeseen and quite unpredictable. Up to 1989, the CIA assessment of the USSR was that it was as stable as rock. We all know how things went down in just couple years.
We simply cannot know anything for sure....what the pressure and fissure points are...or what are the points for great action and reform. We can give an educated guess, but its still just a guess...and education is relative....and often proven wrong in reality looking back in history.
I would like
@Joe Shearer to read our convo here (and any of the larger thread if he desires) and see if he has anything to say.
