By Uzma Ehtasham
When Syed Asim Munir arrived in Bavaria between 12 and 14 February, he did so at a moment when the vocabulary of global politics had once again turned to war, deterrence and uneasy ceasefires. The annual Munich Security Conference has long functioned as a kind of diplomatic seismograph, registering the tremors of an unsettled international order. This year, with Ukraine grinding through another winter of conflict and the Middle East mired in violence, the atmosphere was predictably taut. For Pakistan’s army chief and chief of defence forces, attendance was not ceremonial. It was a calculated signal that Islamabad intends to be present in the rooms where strategic narratives are shaped.
The breadth of his meetings underscored that ambition. In talks with Marco Rubio, discussions spanned regional flashpoints and the enduring challenge of counter-terrorism cooperation. Separate engagements with Germany’s interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, the German chancellor’s adviser on foreign and security policy, Günter Motter, and the chief of defence of the Bundeswehr, Carsten Breuer, revolved around contemporary security threats and the mechanics of sustained bilateral dialogue. Conversations with Admiral Renato Rodrigues de Aguiar Freire and the head of the Lebanese armed forces reflected a similar emphasis on practical military-to-military cooperation and shared assessments of volatility in their respective regions.
The choreography of such encounters matters. In an era increasingly defined by great-power rivalry, smaller and mid-tier states are often reduced to spectators or proxies. Pakistan’s effort in Munich was to resist that reduction. By engaging with American, European and other counterparts in quick succession, it sought to project itself not as a passive security consumer but as a state with experience to share and interests to defend.
Rubio’s address to the conference, delivered in a tone at once confident and combative, set out Washington’s self-conception as an indispensable actor. He argued that the United Nations had struggled to resolve major conflicts and credited the United States with facilitating a ceasefire in Gaza and securing prisoner releases. He also claimed a pivotal role in bringing Russia and Ukraine towards negotiations. Under Donald Trump, he said, the United States would pursue a global peace mission, prepared if necessary to act alone, though he called too for a coordinated US–European strategy.
Such assertions were received with a mixture of assent and scepticism. The conference unfolded against a backdrop of entrenched wars and proliferating crises: Ukraine’s battlefields, the devastation in Gaza, and the persistent mutation of transnational militancy. Organizations such as Islamic State and al-Qaeda may have been organizationally degraded, but their ideological residues endure, finding footholds in fragile states from Afghanistan to parts of Africa. For Pakistan, this is not an abstract concern. Instability across its western frontier reverberates through its borderlands, feeding cycles of displacement and violence.
Islamabad frequently points to operations such as Zarb-e-Azb and Radd-ul-Fasaad as evidence of its determination to dismantle militant networks and restore the state’s writ. Those campaigns extracted a heavy toll in lives and resources, and they disrupted entrenched extremist infrastructure. Yet as Pakistani officials have long acknowledged, military action alone cannot inoculate a society against radicalization. Political coherence, economic opportunity and regional diplomacy are equally indispensable. In Munich, the message was that Pakistan has learned, at considerable cost, the limits of force without parallel reform.
That message must be read against a shifting strategic landscape. The rivalry between Washington, Beijing and Moscow has hardened into something more structural than episodic disagreement. Trade, technology and security are increasingly intertwined in a contest that risks dividing the world into competing blocs. For Pakistan, which maintains deep economic and infrastructural ties with China while also sustaining longstanding, if sometimes fraught, relations with the United States and Europe, equilibrium is not a rhetorical preference but a strategic necessity. The sequence of meetings in Munich reflected this delicate calibration: engage broadly, avoid exclusivity, preserve maneuvering space.
Beyond the geometry of power politics lies a more disquieting reality. Conflicts such as Gaza demand not merely pauses in fighting but credible political settlements grounded in international law and self-determination. Pakistan has consistently supported Palestinian statehood in line with UN resolutions, while maintaining a formally neutral stance on the Russia–Ukraine war and urging dialogue. The credibility of such positions depends, however, on a willingness among major powers to privilege negotiation over spectacle.
Security debates in Munich repeatedly circled back to a broader point: durable peace cannot be constructed solely through deterrence. Economic inequality, climate stress, food insecurity and energy shocks create grievances that extremist movements are adept at exploiting. A security architecture divorced from justice and development will remain brittle, however sophisticated its weaponry. For states such as Pakistan, grappling simultaneously with fiscal strain and security threats, the linkage between economic resilience and strategic stability is particularly acute.
(The writer is a public health professional, journalist, and possesses expertise in health communication, having keen interest in national and international affairs, can be reached at uzma@metro-morning.com)
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