The global setting has altered radically, but the enmity with India remains a constant, although it has gained in predictability and, probably, stability. Subversion is still a potential rather than an active threat. Problems of law and order are more acute, but the means of dealing with them has not changed greatly. Rather, Pakistan's security problems are rooted in its own polity and society. Repeated political collapse, corruption, inability to define its ethnic and religious identities, and failure to meet the needs of the people are challenges that could eviscerate a state even with the most capable military machine and efficient security apparatus.
Poverty remains a serious problem in Pakistan.
The population of 135 million is growing at almost 3 percent per year. Internal threats to Pakistan come from several sources. The greatest danger to the democratic constitutional structure is posed by the recurrent intervention in the government of the Pakistani military and, since the Zia years, by the president who, under the controversial Eighth Amendment to the constitution, is empowered to arbitrarily dismiss the prime minister and National Assembly as well as the provisional governors. It could be argued that the military has only intervened when the political situation has deteriorated hopelessly and that the threat is in fact from much more deepseated problems. Another danger is the problem of ethnic unrest.