Pakistan’s recent facilitation of dialogue between the United States and Iran in Islamabad marks a notable assertion of diplomatic agency in a volatile regional environment. At a moment when escalation in the Middle East threatens wider systemic disruption, Islamabad’s ability to convene adversarial actors signals relevance. Yet this episode also raises a more fundamental question for Pakistan itself: can diplomatic initiatives be sustained in the absence of a clearly prioritised national security doctrine?

This question becomes particularly salient as Pakistan’s National Security Policy 2022–2026 approaches its endpoint. The NSP introduced a “comprehensive security” framework that sought to reorient national priorities towards geo-economics, human security, and development-led stability. In doing so, it reflected a broader post-Cold War expansion of security thinking. However, the contemporary international system, marked by renewed great-power competition and regional militarisation, compels a reassessment of whether such an expansive framework can provide sufficient strategic direction.

From a realist perspective, states operate under conditions of anarchy, where survival remains the primary objective and security is guaranteed through material capabilities. In such a system, diplomacy is not autonomous; it is embedded within the broader logic of power. Strategic studies literature consistently emphasises the principle of ends–ways–means alignment, whereby national objectives (ends), policy instruments (ways), and available capabilities (means) must remain coherent. When this alignment weakens, policy becomes diffuse and signalling ambiguous.

Pakistan’s existing but almost irrelevant NSP risks precisely this form of diffusion. By integrating economic vulnerability, climate risk, governance challenges, and military threats within a single conceptual framework, it expands the scope of security without establishing a clear hierarchy among them.........

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