Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday (November 13) signed the 27th Amendment to the 1973 Constitution into law; it was passed by the Senate that very day and the National Assembly a day earlier.The Amendment has already been widely analysed as demolishing Pakistan’s current constitutional framework. It brings sweeping changes to the country’s civil-military and inter-services setup, and its federal character.Key changes include: the establishment of the Chief of Defence Forces office which will always be held by the Army Chief who will effectively also command the Pakistan Navy (Article 243), and Air Force, complete legal immunity to five-star rank officers even after demitting office (a privilege not granted to either the President or Prime Minister in Article 248), and the supersession of the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP) through a new Federal Constitutional Court which usurps the SCP’s power to hear constitutional matters.Story continues below this adUltimately, however, the Amendment represents three crucial aspects: the logical fulfillment of Asim Munir’s quest to make Pakistan a “hard state”, the maturity of Pakistan’s “hybrid model” of governance that has kept the military in charge while redirecting formal accountability to a civilian administration (especially since 2018), and the institutionalisation of the military’s centrality to Pakistan’s foreign policy.Army consolidates powerThe Pakistan Army’s dominance of the country’s political and economic structures is historic and well known. However, the domestic popularity of the military within Pakistan evidently touched new lows, especially during and after the removal of former Prime Minister Imran Khan.The military-backed Shahbaz Sharif-led government’s treatment and imprisonment of the former PM, the botched general elections of February 2024 — following which the state refused Imran’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) the right to nominate members to reserved Parliamentary seats — as well as several violent crackdowns on both protests by PTI supporters and other popular demonstrations across 2023 and 2024, have all collectively contributed to this popular resentment. However, it is also clear that the Pakistan Army under Asim Munir used two specific catalysts to set up the eventual strengthening of the military’s hold on power.The first catalyst was internal. Parallel to the downturn in Pakistan’s democratic character, there has been a sharp rise in militant and terrorist attacks in the country, with over 2,300 attacks since early 2021. This includes the resurgence of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has benefited immensely from the Afghan Taliban’s return to power in neighbouring Afghanistan. In March 2025, an unprecedented hijacking of the Jafar Express by the Balochistan Liberation Army evidently crossed a new threshold for the military.Story continues below this adEven as the Pakistan government formally blamed India as well as the Afghan Taliban for backing militants in Pakistan, then-General Asim Munir leveraged the incident to question the state’s institutional weaknesses in the face of multi-faceted threats. Munir’s questions, such as “How long will we continue to sacrifice countless lives in the style of a soft state?” in a meeting of Pakistan’s National Security Committee earlier this year, were premised on the need to remove all institutional scaffoldings that limit the military’s power since “nothing was more important than the security of the country”.The second catalyst was external. Provoking a bilateral crisis with India in April/May of 2025 evidently allowed the military to rally more popular support for itself. Notwithstanding the fact that the Pakistan Air Force briefly threatened to crowd the Army out of the spotlight during the crisis, Asim Munir’s rapid elevation to Field Marshal (a rank ceremonially held for life) allowed the Army to substantially refocus attention towards itself.Expectedly, the state’s celebration of its self-declared victory in the conflict arguably also led the military to believe that it had induced the creation of a fresh Overton window for the complete consolidation of power. This included the need to make the Army’s sister services formally subservient and supplant offices that were meant to promote jointness in warfighting (such as the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee) with an Army-led office that assumes command of all three services along with the country’s nuclear forces (through the new National Strategic Command).The ‘hybrid model’The 27th Amendment to the Pakistani Constitution evidently stands in sharp contrast to the directions that Pakistan’s last Army Chief Qamar Bajwa had issued in 2022 when he asserted that the armed forces had distanced themselves from politics, “and wanted to continue to do so”. As is well known, the Pakistan Army’s entrenchment within the country’s institutions has only increased since, with Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir assuming even newer economic roles such as that within the government’s Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC).Story continues below this adAlso Read | Pakistan’s 27th Constitutional Amendment Bill now law: How it makes Asim Munir more powerful, weakens Supreme CourtHowever, given the rich lessons that the Pakistan Army has drawn from past periods of direct military rule, it has long been evident that the military has been on a fresh learning curve that allows it to nourish the hybrid model instead of formally taking power.Since Pervez Musharraf demitted office, the nascent stages of this hybrid model featured at least some internal limits, given the Pakistan Army’s learning that formal military rule could potentially trigger even wider popular unrest. This meant that the Army’s focus would remain on maximising power within the hybrid setup, with a specific focus on eventually eliminating the possibility of prosecuting the Army Chief for his actions in office (given the military’s institutional memory of Musharraf’s fate). That the Field Marshal of the Pakistan Army receives blanket immunity is testament to the fact that the Pakistan Army’s hybrid model has now come of age.Finally, the 27th Amendment has also ensured that the judiciary (as the last pillar of a democratic state) does not undermine the military’s consolidation of power. In any case, the SCP has enabled the military’s preferences through judgments such as that in May 2025, which allowed civilians to be tried in military courts (a priority for the Army since the May 2023 riots which featured destruction of military property).Recalcitrant judges with democratic credentials, such as Mansoor Ali Shah, were sidelined enough for them to resign in protest, especially as the 27th Amendment ultimately “abolished” the SCP (in Justice Shah’s words).Story continues below this adMilitary heads foreign policyThe security of the Pakistan Army’s predominant domestic position through the 27th Amendment is also vital for the institution to fully leverage its role for Pakistan’s new relationships with both old and new partners.These include new regional security architectures, such as the Saudi-Pakistan Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement, which the Saudi state can leverage to build its own nascent indigenous defence capabilities in return for economic assistance to Islamabad. Here, the Pakistan military’s unique position as a significant partner to major defence manufacturers such as China and Turkey allows it to channel both military equipment and knowledge to third states such as Saudi Arabia or Azerbaijan. In any case, Pakistan’s historic security assistance to multiple Arab states is what the Pakistan Army now seeks to capitalise on, especially in the absence of economic heft.Just as important is Pakistan’s willingness to risk potential on-ground military involvement in other regions, such as in Gaza, as part of President Donald Trump’s proposed International Stabilization Force — especially as Arab states remain hesitant to do so without a UN mandate for the force.While its specific commitments and partnerships are contingent on the military’s future priorities and the regional and global geopolitical landscape, it is already evident that the Army Chief has formally cemented the preeminence of his office over the civilian leadership.Story continues below this adAmong other reasons, this is best reflected in Munir’s increased comfort in meeting multiple Heads of Government/State, sometimes even without the presence of Pakistan’s civilian leadership and the PM. While Munir’s closed-door meeting with President Trump in the White House in June is usually cited as the most prominent such instance, Munir has also engaged in such meetings with other leaders, such as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in July and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in October.Even as past Pakistan Army Chiefs have engaged Arab Heads of State in the past, the diversity and frequency of Munir’s meetings highlight both the increased comfort of the Pakistan Army in diplomatic dealings as well as foreign recognition of the military’s overt centrality in Pakistan’s leadership.Bashir Ali Abbas is a Senior Research Associate at the Council for Strategic and Defense Research, New Delhi.