A nuclear order sans guardrails & Islamabad's case for talking

The global order is running on habit more than rules, and political instability has become its background noise. The war in Ukraine grinds on, the Middle East has just lived through a US-Israeli war with Iran, and governments from Europe to Asia are rewriting their alliances in real time. In February, New START expired, and for the first time in decades no treaty caps the strategic arsenals of the US and Russia. The nuclear equation is no longer bipolar, and it is no longer only about arsenals. It is about thresholds, perceptions and which capitals can still pick up the phone. Deterrence theory was built for two superpowers; it is now being stretched across a crowded field of nuclear states, missile defences and fast-moving technology.

Pakistan sits at the centre of that equation. The four-day military exchange with India in May 2025, marked by missiles, drones and air combat, ended in a ceasefire on 10 May. India's own Chief of Defence Staff later conceded that aircraft were lost on the first night, and the story of effortless superiority did not survive contact with the evidence. Islamabad's reading is that credible deterrence kept a short war short, a reading that deserves a serious hearing.

Alliances and diplomacy have moved accordingly. In September 2025, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement, treating aggression against one as aggression against both. Beijing remains its partner of first resort, with CPEC entering its second phase. Then came the Iran war. Pakistan helped broker the 8 April ceasefire, hosted the first direct US-Iran talks in decades on 11-12 April, and signed the Islamabad Memorandum as guarantor in June. Last week the UN Secretary-General came to Islamabad to salute that leadership. Pakistan has become a venue where adversaries meet.

That is the backdrop to INC-2026, the Islamabad Non-Proliferation Conference on 20 and 21 October. Credit belongs to the Strategic Vision Institute for convening it. Bringing scholars from Russia, China, the US and Europe to Islamabad takes institutional confidence and a reputation for honest brokerage. Thirteen international speakers from six countries, nine in person and four online, will take up deterrence after May 2025, the collapse of arms control, missile defence and emerging technology. They include SIPRI's Wilfred Wan, Sir Lawrence Freedman and Rose Gottemoeller, who negotiated New START for Washington. They will sit alongside Pakistani scholars and diplomats, among them Ambassador Kamran Akhtar, Pakistan's envoy in Vienna, and SVI's Dr Naeem Salik.

Given that missile treaties do the real work, academic settings are still considered relevant because ideas precede policy. Peter Haas's work on epistemic communities showed how networks of experts shape what decision-makers consider thinkable. South Asia's nuclear debate has long run on borrowed categories: Waltz's confidence that nuclear weapons induce caution, Sagan's warning about organisational failure, Snyder's stability-instability paradox. May 2025 tested all three, and that evidence belongs to scholars as much as to spokesmen. Universities and think tanks also train the analysts and diplomats who will inherit these questions, and they can disagree in public without starting a crisis. A researcher who has heard Pakistan's reasoning first hand carries something no textbook written elsewhere can supply.

Pakistan arrives with a record worth hearing. Its six nuclear power plants supply 3,530 MW at a capacity factor above 90% and, by Foreign Office figures, 18.3% of the country's electricity. In March the IAEA Board of Governors unanimously approved safeguards for Chashma-5, a 1,200 MW unit under construction. In space, EO-1, EO-2 and EO-3 now form an indigenous Earth-observation series, and SUPARCO named Pakistan's first astronaut in these same weeks. The chosen pilot will spend about a week aboard China's Tiangong station, the first foreign astronaut it has carried.

None of this settles the deeper debate, and the conference should not pretend it does. But credibility in the nuclear order is earned by being safeguarded, being present and being willing to be questioned. Islamabad is offering all three. If INC-2026 leaves behind a record of arguments rather than slogans, it will have done more for stability than another communiqué.