Chandigarh: Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is on the verge of coming entirely under the control of Field Marshal Asim Munir, head of a military establishment that views these weapons of mass destruction (WMD) not merely as deterrents, but as usable tools.
This unprecedented empowerment follows the Pakistani Senate’s passage on Monday and the National Assembly’s on Wednesday (November 11) of a constitutional amendment granting the self-styled field marshal exclusive authority over all strategic assets and overarching control of the other two services, and the country’s broader military structure. In addition, he will enjoy immunity from prosecution for life.
With the 27th Amendment receiving presidential assent on Thursday, the Army’s supremacy over Pakistan’s expanding stockpile of some 170 tactical and strategic warheads will be formally codified.
The swiftness with which the amendment cleared Pakistan’s parliament is also an indicator of Munir’s influence and clout.
Under the revised arrangement, Pakistan’s already marginalised civilian institutions would be stripped of whatever influence they once held over strategic decision-making. All pretence of their oversight would vanish, placing launch authority squarely in Munir’s hands.
A career intelligence officer steeped in the Army’s deeply conservative ethos, Munir often portrays Pakistan’s survival and strength as divinely ordained. He describes his country as a “fortress of Islam”, emphasising the supremacy of faith (iman) as the bedrock of national power.
Such a worldview – infused with religiosity and military pride – is expected to almost certainly shape his command and control structure over Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, fostering profound implications not just for India, but for regional and global stability.
Munir’s rhetoric fuses faith, nationalism and militarism – casting the Army and the other two services he will now command under the constitutional amendment not merely as state institutions, but as instruments of a divine mission. In such a mindset, the line between religious duty and nuclear decision-making becomes perilously thin, turning strategic choices into moral crusades rather than rational calculations.
Within this framework, tactical battlefield missile systems like Nasr are viewed as ‘equalisers’ against India’s conventional superiority, while long-range missiles such as Shaheen-III, Ababeel and others are regarded by Munir and his army peers as instruments of punitive dominance, designed to impose incalculable strategic costs upon New Delhi.
Guided by Munir, Pakistan’s Punjabi-led military sees nuclear deterrence and the reality of mutually assured destruction not as a limit, but as a force multiplier or tool in a perilous contest of ‘chicken’ – or Russian roulette – with India. Their conviction that Pakistan would somehow remain insulated from the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear exchange sparked by their own risk-taking, remains both delusional and dangerous – yet it persists.
Since Independence, Pakistan’s Punjabi elite – from its most populous and politically powerful Punjab province, steeped in the tenets of daleri (valour), ghairat (honour) and badla (revenge) – has steadfastly dominated all major pillars of the state: the military, politics, civil service, commerce and the media, carrying with them a self-assured sense of having been born to rule.
Their supremacy is reinforced by a tight-knit network of family and provincial loyalties, ensuring that the levers of government – including policy-making and key military and bureaucratic recruitment – remain firmly in Punjabi hands and continue to reflect their ethos.
After the 1998 nuclear tests, the Pakistan Army assumed responsibility for shaping the country’s strategic doctrine to counter India’s overwhelming advantages in size, economic clout and battlefield firepower, ultimately formalising a ‘first-use’ posture that positioned nuclear weapons as a tool to offset their inferiority in non-nuclear forces.
Unlike India’s declared no-first-use stance, Pakistan’s strategy relied on deterrence through deliberate ambiguity – the belief that even the threat of the early use of WMDs would dissuade New Delhi from launching or sustaining a conventional war. To an extent, this logic worked to Islamabad’s advantage, as seen after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, when India refrained from military retaliation – deterred as much by Pakistan’s nuclear signalling as by diplomatic caution and Western pressure – and even recently, during India’s Operation Sindoor in May, when the United States cited the risk of nuclear war as a reason for insisting India and Pakistan agree to a ceasefire.
Presently, however, that very strategy of nuclear intimidation is poised to be entrenched even further with the Pakistan parliament’s approval of the 27th constitutional amendment.
By placing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal directly under Munir’s command, the country’s deterrence doctrine becomes less an institutional shield and more a high-stakes poker game. Every decision – signalling, threatening or holding back – would now be concentrated in the hands of a single commander, steeped in the Punjabi military ethos of risk, pride and divine mission.
It also reinforced Pakistan’s long-standing Punjabi military approach, which treats nuclear brinkmanship as a strategic tool and a means of intimidating opponents, deliberately keeping the threshold for using WMDs low. That threshold can be crossed whenever the vague notion of ‘national survival’ – often indistinguishable from the Army’s own continued existence – is perceived to be at stake.
In Pakistan, ‘national survival’ has long been equated with the Army’s subsistence, which frequently sees itself as the state rather than merely its guardian – except for a brief, humiliating period after the 1971 war and the loss of East Pakistan. Consequently, any challenge to the military’s dominance – whether political, territorial or psychological – is treated as an existential threat to the nation and deemed in urgent need of protection.
Meanwhile, centralising any nuclear-armed nation’s strategic assets under a single individual is inherently risky; doing so in Pakistan – where faith, pride and Punjabi militarism converge – is exponentially more so. As former US defence secretary Robert Gates once warned: “Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are safe – until they aren’t.” The danger, he noted, lies not in theft, but in command decisions made under stress – and that caution resonates now more than ever.
Furthermore, growing zeal amongst field-level commanders within Pakistan’s nuclear command add another dangerous layer of risk. Many, steeped in Islamist-nationalist narratives, see themselves as defenders of faith, rather than professional soldiers. Thus, in a crisis situation or a tense standoff with India, such officers could interpret military signals as moral imperatives, viewing nuclear retaliation not as escalation but as celestial retribution.
In the event of another Sindoor-style confrontation, Pakistan’s response may rest on Munir’s instincts – shaped less by professional judgment than by the faith-driven convictions of his loyalists as tensions escalate and missile and drone battles swing back and forth.
All this renders miscalculation a terrifyingly real possibility and in an environment shaped by a Punjabi martial culture that prizes aggression, a single rash decision could push the subcontinent to the brink of nuclear war and eventual Armageddon.
A misread signal – a false intelligence cue, broken communications or panic under fire – too could trigger a Nasr launch without higher clearance, while a local clash might be mistaken for a full-scale assault, setting off a spiral of nuclear escalation.
In such crises, conventional doctrines of signalling, deterrence and escalation control would collapse, unleashing a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe impossible to imagine.
In conclusion, South Asia’s nuclear landscape has never been more dangerous.
With Pakistan’s entire arsenal about to be placed under the mercurial Munir, the unthinkable is no longer distant – it is within reach and a single misstep or miscalculation could unleash apocalypse.