Pakistan today faces serious pressure on its security, economy and social fabric, yet no war has been declared and no front line can be drawn on a map. This is not a paradox. It is the defining feature of contemporary conflict. A famous military theorist and Prussian army officer Carl von Clausewitz advised that the first and most far-reaching judgement a statesman can make is to understand the kind of war being undertaken, neither mistaking it for something alien to its nature nor forcing it into one. The nature of war remains constant, but its character has changed, and Pakistan sits at the receiving end of that change.

War remains what it has always been: a contest of wills, an extension of politics by other means. What has shifted is how it is fought. More lethal munitions, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, deep economic interdependence and growing global sensitivity to human rights have made conventional war costly and often self-defeating. States therefore reach for other levers, applying diplomatic, economic, psychological and political pressure to bend an adversary’s will without crossing the threshold of open war. In the process, the line........

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