PAKISTAN: Between a rock...

The trigger for all this has been provided by the US decision to withhold a little under a third of its military aid to Pakistan which was due for payment ($800 million). The decision has come after much agonizing and dithering. The Barack Obama administration (including the Pentagon) would have preferred the choices not to have turned so stark. But the US Congress had been steadily growing agitated over unquestioned disbursal of vast sums of taxpayer's monies to a country which has established a consistent record of acting against United States' interests. The break in relations came with president Barack Obama's ironic decision to order the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden.

China is fully aware of the downside of getting too closely associated with that failed state. China will not commit US mistakes in Pakistan. Indeed, China has been counseling Pakistan not to make a final break with the US. But Pakistan's internal dynamics make such a break inevitable. Anti-Americanism is all-pervasive. The jihadi influence in the military is rising. The Pakistan military also needs the jihadis to advance its interests in Afghanistan and against India. And the civilian political leadership is powerless to break this nexus. Any which way you look, Pakistan is programmed for destruction.

With Kayani leading the Pakistani double game on terrorism, naturally he has been hurt the worst by Bin Laden's death. Initial US reports suggested he would be overthrown in a colonel's coup. Follow up intelligence said he had become very vulnerable and was no longer in a dominant position vis-a-vis the corps commanders. This writer assessed Kayani would go. He has no reason to change the analysis. To save himself, Kayani has had to distance from the US anti-terror campaign, and the consequences have followed. It is US aid cut now. The drone campaign in FATA conceivably could increase, peppered with American special forces' actions. While committed to leave Afghanistan, the US cannot show itself as being bogged down by an angry and uncooperative "ally".

English Oak

Pakistan doesn't have the ability to survive by its own. The economy has failed, poverty is at its peak, terrorism is spreading and government is bankrupt.

I foresee a military coup in very near future, in which the civilian and some military leadership will be eliminated. AND, the new government will work hand in hand with terrorists, albeit slyly, to inflict damages in EU, US and other parts of the world, triggering a limited intense war.