Pakistan’s New Military Order Is a Warning for Washington

In Washington, Field Marshal Asim Munir increasingly looks like the man who can make Pakistan useful to the United States. Pakistan has just written Munir even more deeply into the architecture of the state as he now sits atop a legally centralized command that reaches conventional forces, strategic systems, and the prime minister’s national-security advice. Munir, now formally serving as Chief of Defense Forces, speaks directly with President Donald Trump and has become Washington’s principal channel for engaging Tehran.The latest restructuring of Pakistan’s military command has actually made the opposite case. The 27th Constitutional Amendment, followed by legislation passed this month to implement the new command architecture, has concentrated unprecedented authority in Munir’s hands. Yet his military cannot stabilize Pakistan-administered Kashmir, cannot contain the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Baloch insurgents, and has still signed a mutual-defense pact with Turkey and Saudi Arabia—dubbed the Mecca Accord—that could drag it into distant crises. For the world, treating Pakistan as a reliable intermediary in negotiations with Iran would be a mistake of timing and of jud...