Chandigarh: With its 27th constitutional amendment, Pakistan has vested exclusive control of its nuclear arsenal in self-styled Field Marshal Asim Munir, concentrating authority in a single unelected leader – a move reminiscent of North Korea, where strategic weapons are similarly commanded by an absolute and unaccountable Supreme Leader.

Beyond this structural similarity, a deeper historical symmetry also emerges: both Islamabad and Pyongyang had developed their nuclear programmes under sustained Chinese technical, financial and diplomatic support. Beijing’s long-term patronage had not only enabled the expansion of respective nuclear stockpiles but also helped configure their atomic weapons and delivery systems – Pakistan’s, in particular, explicitly aimed at India.

Additionally, in the 1990s, Pakistan and North Korea had deepened bilateral strategic ties through the A.Q. Khan proliferation network, which, with Pakistani military assistance, clandestinely transferred critical nuclear technology, centrifuge designs, and technical know-how to Pyongyang in exchange for Nodong-class ballistic missiles.

China once again subtly supported this illicit exchange, allowing transfers to proceed with minimal international scrutiny, accelerating both countries’ nuclear programmes: North Korea gained the capacity to produce fissile material more rapidly, while Pakistan enhanced its strategic missile delivery capabilities.

Initially, Pakistan’s nuclear command structure involved multiple actors – military, political, and civilian – providing a degree of institutional diffusion and oversight. Over decades, this architecture has shifted gradually. And with the 27th amendment – approved near-unanimously by the National Assembly, Senate, and endorsed by President Asif Ali Zardari last week – total authority over the country’s strategic assets is now vested in Asim Munir, 57, who is echoing North Korea’s model of a single, unaccountable nuclear decision-maker, raising serious concerns over concentrating such power in an already volatile region in one entity.

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme has always been India-centric, even before its May 1998 underground atomic tests. Thereafter, its ‘first-use’ doctrine evolved into a full-spectrum deterrence posture designed to counter India’s conventional superiority, incorporating tactical battlefield systems such as the Nasr/Hatf-IX, with a 60-70 km strike range, alongside longer-range assets, capable of targeting both counter-force and counter-value sites across India.

Both missile systems are designed to safeguard Pakistan’s survival and, by extension, the Army’s primacy, while signalling that even limited conflicts with India carry the risk of nuclear escalation – thereby reflecting Islamabad’s focus on maintaining credible deterrence and operational leverage.

By contrast, India’s no-first-use nuclear weapons policy remains firmly under civilian control, with ultimate authority resting with the prime minister and its nuclear command authority. Its reliance on credible minimum deterrence and a secure second-strike capability accentuates a deliberately structured system, designed to prevent individual discretion from shaping escalation dynamics, in stark contrast to Pakistan’s highly centralised model.

Accordingly, the 27th amendment fully centralises Pakistan’s nuclear authority in Munir, who, as the newly appointed Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) and concomitant Army chief, now heads the National Strategic Command (NSC) to oversee Islamabad’s growing stockpile of some 170 tactical and strategic WMD.

Pakistan’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme is also unique among the nine declared and undeclared nuclear-armed states, dominated as it is by an increasingly Islamised military – primarily its army. 

The amendment makes this even more alarming by consolidating operational and strategic authority in a single leader, eliminating all institutional intermediaries in the nuclear decision-making chain. As in North Korea, consensus would no longer be required: employment of WMDs now rest entirely on Munir’s personal judgment.

Previously, Islamabad’s nuclear weapons oversight was supervised by the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA), established in February 2000, in which the prime minister held a casting vote and the chiefs of the Army, Air Force, Navy, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) participated. The CJCSC – a senior four-star officer, appointed on a rotational basis from either of the three services – served as a nominal check on the Army’s control of nuclear assets. But with the amendment altogether abolishing the CJCSC post – created in 1976 to provide rotational leadership and prevent concentration of military power this bulwark to Munir’s authority had also disappeared.

The aforementioned NCA had also included a host of civilian actors, experts and technicians from the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), established shortly after the NCA in early 2000, to manage Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, ensure its security, operational readiness, and provide administrative oversight.

Acting as the NCA’s executive and technical arm, the SPD safeguarded nuclear weapons and their infrastructure, while facilitating coordination between military and civilian leadership to prevent unilateral action. Though imperfect and Army-dominated, the two-tier NCA-SPD system mandated collective deliberation before authorising WMD use, providing at least a nominal safeguard against unleashing the Armageddon on the subcontinent by employing nuclear weapons. 

The 27th amendment totally reshapes this architecture, with the overarching NSC replacing the NCA, subordinating the SPD to Munir and presenting Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif with the fait accompli of appointing the former body’s management and administrative head from the army at Munir’s discretion.

In the meantime, almost nothing is publicly known about whether the 27th amendment has affected Pakistan’s two- or three-man rule or its Permissive Action Links (PALs) safeguard measures, designed to prevent unauthorised use and accidental detonation of nuclear weapons. The former requires multiple authorised personnel to jointly enable launch codes, while PALs are integrated code-lock systems within each tactical and strategic warhead to prevent arming or firing without valid authentication.

Analysts, meanwhile, warned that concentrating nuclear decision-making in a single military leader sharply heightened the risks of impulsive escalation, rapid decision cycles and personalised strategic choices – particularly in the emotionally charged India-Pakistan context, shaped by decades of mistrust, animosity, and unresolved borders. Historical crises – from 1947 over Kashmir, the 1971 war and the loss of East Pakistan, to Kargil and more recently Operation Sindoor, to name a few, where India had repeatedly prevailed decisively, had only reinforced Pakistan’s threat perceptions and driven its Army to progressively monopolise its strategic command authority in order to unashamedly rattle the nuclear sabre.

Against this backdrop of unprecedented authority concentrated in Field Marshal Munir’s hands, assessing his psychological, emotional and strategic profile from open-source material becomes essential, as his personal convictions are likely to shape decision-making and the broader India-Pakistan security calculus.

Munir is widely perceived as a deeply religious, disciplined and ideologically driven soldier from a conservative background. Born in Rawalpindi in 1968, after his schoolteacher father and Imam migrated from Jalandhar to Rawalpindi after Partition, Munir schooled locally at the Markazi Madrasah Dar ul Tajweed madrassa.

He joined the Pakistan Army in 1986, via the Officers Training School (OTS) at Mangla, rather than the more prestigious Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and consequently, was seemingly determined to overcome what he may have perceived as a disadvantage in class and prestige in the institution-conscious military.

He won the OTS Sword of Honour and was commissioned into the prestigious Frontier Force Regiment and ascended in rank, following multiple field and staff postings. He earned an MPhil in Public Policy & Strategic Security Management at Islamabad’s National Defence University and completed professional military courses in Japan, Quetta, and Malaysia. During a posting to Saudi Arabia, as a young officer, he memorised the Qur’an, earning the title Hafiz-e-Quran or Guardian of the Quran and loses no opportunity in showcasing his deep doctrinal knowledge and mastery of Islamic scripture in speeches and public messaging.

Peers describe Munir as pragmatic, yet ‘hard-line’, particularly toward India, often invoking the two-nation theory, which asserted that Muslims, being distinct from Hindus, needed a separate homeland like Pakistan, to preserve their Islamic identity.

In recent months, Munir has reinforced this stance with nuclear signalling, including stark warnings about the potential use of strategic weapons. At a black-tie dinner in Tampa in the US in August, hosted by Pakistani businessman Munir, he declared that Pakistan was a nuclear-armed country and if it believed it was ‘going down’, it would take half the world- a euphemism for India- down with it by employing these apocalyptic weapons. In reaction, a cross-section of analysts maintained that Munir’s language and posture reflected his conviction that nuclear weapons were not only weapons of war, but central to Pakistan’s survival.

Professionally, Munir’s rise has been atypical.

Despite being superseded early in his career, he persevered, becoming Director General of Military Intelligence in 2017 and later headed the omnipresent Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISID) for eight months, before being summarily removed by then-PM Imran Khan – reportedly after raising corruption allegations involving Khan’s wife, Bushra Bibi. Munir perceived this episode as a grave slight, creating lasting enmity between him and Khan, who remains in jail and is unlikely to be released anytime soon.

In the rank of Lieutenant General, Munir then served in turn, as Corps Commander and  Quartermaster General, before becoming the Army Chief in November 2022, for a five-year term which, under the 27th amendment has been extended to 2030. He assumed the ceremonial rank of Field Marshal in May, and via the 27th amendment was appointed CDF last week and granted legal immunity from all prosecution for actions taken in office, further consolidating both his operational, strategic and political control over Pakistan’s military, nuclear assets and the overall ruling establishment.

That said, critics describe Munir as austere and doctrinal, emotionally invested in restoring the Army’s supremacy. In this view, his assumption of total control over nuclear weapons is not merely strategic, but also symbolic of the Army’s self-image as the ultimate guardian of Pakistan’s destiny, at all costs.

Therefore, with nuclear escalation now concentrated in Munir’s hands, understanding his worldview is not merely an academic or journalistic endeavour – it is a strategic imperative to try and estimate how Pakistan’s nuclear decisions may unfold after the tumultuous 27th amendment, all under the watchful gaze of the US, whose recent policies and engagements have powered Munir’s rise.

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