Pakistan’s geo-strategic location and its pivotal role in global politics over the years have made its internal and external security needs relevant to global powers. Moreover, Pakistan’s troubled history with its neighbors has forced the country to retain a strong military. Concurrently, internal security concerns have compounded the security situation and often ended up stretching Pakistan’s capability to deal with internal and external turbulence.

SEPR’s security studies program is innovative in that it seeks to approach the issue in an integrated manner, addressing concerns throughout what we term the ""security value-chain"" of Pakistan. Rather than isolating the internal political considerations from ""hard security"" issues, we tend to look at these as inter-connected nodes of the same value chain. We therefore focus on the following program areas:

1. Civil-military relations

2. Political economy

3. Foreign policy

4. Traditional security

5. Nuclear non-proliferation and arms control