Given his track record, Nawaz will need to exercise considerably greater care in dealing with the army on this most sensitive of issues than he has demonstrated in the past. Unfortunately, there is no evidence yet that he is capable of doing so.

John R. Schmidt teaches at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University. He served in senior positions in the State Department during a 30-year foreign-service career, including as political counselor in the U.S. embassy in Islamabad in the three years leading up to 9/11. He is the author of The Unraveling: Pakistan in the Age of Jihad.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Ldmaa. CC BY-SA 3.0.