Bangladesh, April 23 -- Pakistan today finds itself in the throes of a deep and multifaceted crisis. A collapsing economy, political volatility, and a fraying internal security order have combined to expose the limits of the states resilience. Armed ethnonationalist movements in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, along with a resurgence of transnational jihadist violence, now pose grave challenges to internal cohesion. Compounding this crisis of the states systemic dysfunction is the unprecedented erosion of public trust in the military — historically the most powerful and stable institution in the country.

In any functioning democracy, such systemic dysfunction might prompt serious institutional introspection. But Pakistan is not...