How Powerful Is Pakistan? | Most Powerful Nations on Earth #8

How powerful is Pakistan, really? It is the only Muslim-majority country on Earth with nuclear weapons, and it built that arsenal for one purpose: deterring a much larger neighbour. In May 2025 its military was tested in live combat in the first missile and air exchange ever fought between two nuclear-armed states.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWq2ytI2TJ4

Start with people and money. Pakistan's population is about 241 million, the fifth largest in the world, and analysts at the IISS put its active military at roughly 660,000 personnel. Yet its defence budget is only about 9 billion dollars, against India's roughly 86 billion — an eight-to-one gap that explains its entire strategy: it cannot match its rival weapon for weapon, so it builds forces that make any attack too costly to attempt.

The forces themselves are substantial: an army of about 560,000 with more than 2,570 tanks and 4,600 artillery pieces, an air force of over 420 combat aircraft mixing American F-16s, Chinese J-10Cs and the JF-17 Thunder that Pakistan builds with China and now exports, and a small navy of submarines and frigates guarding Karachi and the CPEC port of Gwadar.

The deterrent is the core. Analysts estimate around 170 nuclear warheads. The Shaheen-III ballistic missile reaches 2,750 kilometres — all of India. The Ababeel has been tested with multiple-warhead technology, the Babur cruise-missile family can be launched from land, air and submarines, and the short-range Nasr tactical weapon is openly described as the answer to a fast armoured thrust. Together: full-spectrum deterrence.

The limits are economic. Nominal GDP is roughly 400 to 450 billion dollars, per-capita income only about 1,700 dollars, and repeated IMF programmes and heavy debt-service costs crowd out defence modernisation. Its high-end platforms depend heavily on China, which supplies roughly four-fifths of its imported weapons.

The verdict of Episode #8: Pakistan is not a global power, and its economy is its weak leg. But as a regional deterrent it does exactly the job it was built for — analysts rank it around twelfth in the world — and the September 2025 mutual defence agreement with Saudi Arabia suggests its deterrence is becoming an export in its own right. Next episode: how powerful is India?

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWq2ytI2TJ4