Pakistan airspace is literally the only way to supply our forces in Afghanistan without dropping stuff directly from orbit.

I’m not entirely convinced of that. The United States could buy food supplies from Afghan farmers; each farmer who grows wheat is a farmer who does not grow the opium that funds the Taliban. (There is a limited amount of arable land in Afghanistan.) The United States could buy Russian weaponry and ammunition, ensuring a supply line that cannot be easily snapped even by the Russian government. This “cash tether” could solve many supply problems.

Using the “cash tether” leaves only two problems — cash transfers and troop rotation. These would require air access to Afghanistan, although the United States could theoretically use a trans-Caucasus/Kazahkstan/Kyrgyzstan/Tajikistan air corridor to bypass Pakistan. Astute diplomacy in Turkmenistan would strengthen such an air corridor. As long as the requisite tariffs were paid, I doubt there would be any problem with arranging charter flights delivering men and cash to Afghanistan.

Pakistan may think it has NATO by the throat, but it doesn’t. We desperately need to reconfigure our supply system, though.