A changing nuclear order in South Asia

The screen fades from a tense war room to a blinding flash over a foreign skyline. While the recent Hollywood film A House of Dynamite is fiction, its central horror — a nuclear crisis triggered by miscalculation and centralised command — mirrors a dangerous new reality being written not by screenwriters, but by constitutional lawyers in Islamabad. 

The passage of Pakistan's 27th Constitutional Amendment is more than domestic political manoeuvring; it is the deliberate dismantling of a quarter-century's worth of nuclear safety architecture. 

By placing unparalleled authority over the world's fastest-growing nuclear arsenal into the hands of a single military officer and weaving new, ambiguous alliances beyond South Asia, Pakistan has ignited a fuse in one of the planet's most volatile regions. The implications stretch from the Gulf to Washington and Beijing, challenging the fragile peace that has held for decades.

The deliberate machine: How restraint was designed

For over two decades, Pakistan's nuclear command was a machine built for one purpose: preventing a single point of catastrophic failure. Established in 2000 and codified in 2010, the National Command Authority (NCA) was an intricate system of checks and balances. 

Chaired by the civilian prime minister, its members included the heads of the army, navy and air force. A critical, neutral keystone was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC), a four-star officer who coordinated between the services but commanded no troops directly, ensuring that no single branch could dominate nuclear planning. 

This complex design enforced consensus, guaranteed that the Navy's second-strike capabilities and the Air Force's strategic roles were protected, and provided a crucial circuit breaker in a crisis. It was a system born of grim necessity, recognising that in nuclear affairs, institutional restraint is the ultimate form of control.

The new architect: Centralising the 'resilient fortress'

That carefully balanced machine has now been discarded for a sleeker, more dangerous model. 

The 27th Amendment, passed in November 2025, constitutes a radical centralisation of power. It abolishes the neutral CJCSC and elevates the Chief of Army Staff, General Asim Munir, to the new post of Chief of Defence Forces (CDF), granting him supreme authority over all military branches. 

Furthermore, it creates a Commander of the National Strategic Command (NSC), a four-star general in charge of nuclear forces, who will be appointed exclusively from the Army on the recommendation of the Army Chief. 

To cement this transformation, the amendment grants five-star officers like Munir lifetime immunity from prosecution and the right to remain in uniform for life — privileges not even afforded to elected civilian leaders.

Proponents argue that this "streamlines" decision-making for modern warfare. But nuclear command is not about efficiency; it is about managing the ultimate weapon of destruction. 

Critics warn that this creates "command friction" and marginalises the Navy and Air Force, whose perspectives are vital for a credible, survivable nuclear triad. The Army already controls the bulk of Pakistan's estimated 170 nuclear warheads and its land-based delivery systems. 

It now holds unchecked authority over the entire arsenal, collapsing the critical separation between conventional and nuclear command. This is not merely reform; it is the constitutional enshrinement of one-man dominance over Pakistan's strategic destiny.

A tangled web: New alliances and the great power bazaar

This domestic consolidation is step one in a more assertive foreign policy vision championed by General Munir: positioning Pakistan as the "resilient fortress of the Muslim world". 

The first major product of this vision was the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (SMDA) signed with Saudi Arabia on 17 September 2025. The pact declares that "any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both".

While analysts agree that the pact formalises decades of security cooperation and is unlikely to constitute an explicit nuclear umbrella, its deliberate ambiguity is itself a strategic weapon. A Saudi official described it as a "comprehensive defensive arrangement encompassing all military means", a phrase that invites speculation about nuclear coverage without confirming it. 

For Saudi Arabia, unsettled by regional shocks such as an Israeli strike on Qatar, the pact offers reassurance. For Pakistan, it projects power, complicates India's relationship with a key energy supplier, and elevates Islamabad's status as a security guarantor.

Simultaneously, the United States, under the Trump administration, has undertaken a striking courtship of General Munir. This is driven by a fundamental shift in Washington's global posture. 

The 2025 US National Security Strategy explicitly abandons the framework of "great power competition" with China and Russia, instead focusing on "global and regional balances of power" and transactional, interest-based deals. 

In this worldview, a powerful, centralised Pakistani military chief is not a problem to be managed but a potential partner — whether on counter-terrorism, managing China's influence, or securing rare earth minerals. 

Munir's consolidation of power makes him an ideal, singular point of contact for a White House that prefers dealing with strongmen over messy democracies. This US pivot has come at the expense of relations with India, which has grown increasingly frustrated with Washington's engagement with Rawalpindi.

The global implications: A more brittle world

This convergence of events — Pakistan's internal centralisation, its external pact-making, and America's transactional embrace — creates a perfect storm for regional instability.

For India, the situation presents a multifaceted threat. Its primary nuclear adversary has concentrated command in a manner New Delhi views as less predictable. Pakistan's new Army Rocket Force Command (ARFC), designed for conventional deep strikes, blurs the line between conventional and nuclear escalation. 

Moreover, the Saudi pact strategically encircles India, leveraging its energy dependence for geopolitical pressure. This has pushed India into an increasingly complex balancing act: seeking advanced weapons from the United States while relying on Russian oil and diplomacy — a duality that leaves it strategically exposed in a crisis.

For global nuclear security, this represents a staggering setback. Delicate, UN-backed norms of nuclear responsibility, safety and command stability are being openly undermined. Pakistan's doctrine of "full spectrum deterrence" explicitly rejects a no-first-use policy and is designed to counter Indian conventional forces with tactical nuclear weapons. 

Placing this doctrine under the authority of a single army commander increases the risk of rapid escalation during a crisis. Meanwhile, the ambiguous Saudi pact fuels dangerous myths of an "Islamic bomb" and may provoke nuclear hedging by Iran or others.

For the great powers, short-term gains mask long-term dangers. China, Pakistan's "all-weather" ally, may see a strong Munir as a guarantor of its $60 billion China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) investments. 

Yet it also risks being drawn into Pakistan's more aggressive posturing. The United States, in its pursuit of transactional deals, is legitimising a process that erodes democratic norms and makes the region less safe. This approach ignores a fundamental truth: in South Asia, predictability is the bedrock of peace.

The foundation of peace is predictability

The final scene of a thriller, such as A House of Dynamite, offers resolution. The real-world script unfolding in South Asia does not. The old, imperfect but stabilising blueprint for nuclear restraint has been torn up. In its place is a new design that prioritises centralised power, ambiguous alliances and great-power opportunism.

Peace in South Asia was never secured by shared history or goodwill, but by clear red lines, predictable protocols and layered decision-making. The 27th Amendment, and the strategic choreography it has enabled, systematically dismantle these very pillars. The world must look beyond the short-term spectacle of geopolitical deal-making and recognise the profound danger of this moment. 

The stability of a region of nearly two billion people — and the prevention of that final, blinding flash from leaping off the cinema screen into reality — depends on rebuilding the guardrails of restraint before the new architects of instability complete their work. The fuse is lit; the time for concerted, principled diplomacy to extinguish it is now.

Zakir Kibria is a Bangladeshi writer, policy analyst and entrepreneur based in Kathmandu, Nepal. His email address is zk@krishikaaj.com

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.