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How Small Administrative Regions Can Make Pakistan’s Governance Effective

Every few months, a familiar scene repeats itself somewhere in Pakistan. A flood destroys a village in interior Sindh, a gas pipeline never reaches a town in southern Punjab, or a hospital in a Balochistan district sits without doctors for years. The response, almost ritualistically, is a press conference in the provincial capital, a promise […]

The Reflex That Never Learned: From Carte Blanche to Colby

In August 2026, the Pentagon confirmed what attentive observers had been watching crystallize for months: Elbridge Colby, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, is drafting a revised nuclear posture that formally uplifts tactical nuclear weapons as vectors of battlefield use. The declared rationale is extended deterrence — […]

Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems and South Asia’s Fault Lines

In South Asia, Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) have become a reality and not just a theoretical discussion. Loitering munitions and AI-powered surveillance systems have become part and parcel of Indian and Pakistani military strategies, and both were deployed in the May 2025 skirmishes along the Indo-Pakistani border. However, the extent to which these systems […]

The Wrong Battle

Pakistan’s information policy has spent years fighting the wrong thing. It has focused on content: identifying hostile material, requesting removal from platforms, restricting VPN access and blocking platforms entirely when the volume becomes unmanageable. The assumption behind every one of these interventions is that the problem is the post. But it is not; the problem […]

How Nepal Can Reshape Global Response to Climate Catastrophes

The country has moral authority and political visibility in a rare combination. The question is what it proposes to the world. Following the devastating floods last month that tore through settlements across several districts, the wave of support from global leaders and citizens has been extraordinary. It reflects the standing Nepal has built over decades: […]

Leaked Directives Expose the Taliban’s Strategic Complicity

The exposure of an internal directive originating from Haibatullah’s supreme leadership office in Kandahar marks a definitive turning point in assessing the interim Afghan Taliban regime’s compliance with regional counter-terrorism commitments. The leaked document lays bare an official instruction authorizing the direct transfer of military-grade weapons and ammunition, including Kalashnikov assault rifles, RPG rocket launchers, […]

Clash of Civilizations to the Clash of Technologies: AI and the Future Global Order

The end of the Cold War led scholars to develop new theories of international politics. One influential work was Samuel P. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Huntington claimed that the end of ideological conflict between capitalism and communism would change global politics. He asserted that future conflicts would emerge […]

The Pakistan the World Keeps Missing

International standards are often assumed to be a modern invention. They are not. Many predate the United Nations itself; the International Labour Organization (ILO), for instance, was established under the League of Nations and only later folded into the UN system. Countries have long used such standards to strengthen governance, build credibility, and integrate into […]

Navigating Kabul’s Escalatory Rhetoric with Calibrated Deterrence

In a recent interview with Al-Arabiya English, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid issued a stark warning, claiming that any violation of Afghan territory by Pakistan would meet a “crushing response.” This theatrical defiance is a familiar tactic designed to mask deep internal governance vulnerabilities and project external strength. For Pakistan, which has exercised immense strategic restraint […]