Pakistan's policy of alternately coddling and selectively culling Taliban terrorists has resulted in yet another military humiliation. Six Taliban fighters turned a Pakistani naval base into a chaotic battleground. By the time it was all over, 10 security personnel were dead and two planes donated by the US military were destroyed.

It was the fourth attack on the navy in Karachi in a month and the most serious assault on a big military base since the army's national headquarters in Rawalpindi was besieged for two days in October 2009, at a cost of 22 lives.
 

On May 13, bombers killed 98 people outside a police training centre in the northwest, the deadliest attack in the country since the beginning of 2010.

Do these attacks represent an existential threat to Pakistan? Perhaps not yet. But it does present an obvious security challenge for Pakistan's nuclear weapons arsenal.

Long term, that represents an existential threat to Pakistan's neighbors.

Jonathon Narvey is the Editor of The Propagandist