Afghanistan and the West

Written in August, 2021.

The other day, I saw a blurry smart-phone video made by a man who was clinging to the side of a military airplane as it took off. I don’t know the fate of the man, but it’s likely that he fell from the sky and died shortly afterward. He was seeking a better life in the West, but he ended his life as a meat pancake in his homeland. He had a marvel of modern technology in his hand, the smart-phone, which gave him access to a vast store of knowledge. He could have just googled “Can you hang onto a plane?”. But I guess that didn’t occur to him.

Afghans cling to moving US Air Force jet in desperate bid to flee

Most people interpret current events through a moral narrative. The left will try to blame Trump for the US failure in Afghanistan, or perhaps George W. Bush. The right will blame Biden, or point to the long escalation under Obama. Reactionaries will talk about the futility of nation building, and maybe even cheer the Taliban as fellow enemies of the neoliberal global order.

Rather than viewing current events through a moral narrative, I try to understand them as part of bigger historical processes. For that reason, I focus on aspects of the event that others ignore, such as population growth.

The population of Afghanistan roughly doubled from the beginning of the US invasion in 2001 to the withdrawal in 2021. The fertility rate in Afghanistan was very high at the beginning of that period. It is somewhat lower now, but still well above replacement.

Source: World Bank Open Data

Fertility is not uniform.

Almost everyone in Afghanistan is a fundamentalist Muslim by Western standards. The overwhelming majority want a society based on Sharia (Islamic law), according to a Pew Research study. However, some are more traditional than others. The more traditional have higher fertility, so they are out-breeding the more modern.

Modern fashions spread by communication, through mass media and social media. Traditional values propagate by reproduction, from parents to children. They increase by fertility.

Afghanistan is on the leading edge of a biological reaction against modernity. Modern civilization allows almost all children to live to adulthood. Somewhat ironically, this makes a traditional way of life more adaptive, because high fertility is the best reproductive strategy when child mortality is low. The most “backward” people, such as fundamentalist Muslims and the Amish, are the most adapted to modernity, because they are ideologically opposed to it. They benefit from modern civilization, while rejecting it.

The future belongs to those who show up and fight for it. Afghanistan is full of young men, many of whom were born since the US invasion of 2001. They are willing to fight for the future. That is why the United States failed in Afghanistan.

The neocons were Western imperialists, in a way. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, they believed that the modern liberal state was the end of history: that it was destined to eventually replace all existing political systems. They believed that oppressive regimes (such as the Taliban) were standing in the way of progress, and should be crushed by the West. They expected modern liberal societies to naturally emerge from the rubble, with a little help from the West.

The neocons also expected to enrich themselves and their friends in the process. I don’t want to attribute altruistic motives to them. But they did have a moral narrative, which they used to justify their military adventures and social experiments. They really believed in that narrative, as much as the Taliban really believe in Islam.

Their moral narrative made them blind to certain things. They did not understand the importance of demographics in determining the future. They did not understand the weakness of the modern liberal system: that it is actively engaged in pulling the demographic rug out from under its own feet. They did not understand the strength of fundamentalism in the modern environment. So, they failed.

Ignorance of reality often leads to catastrophic failure.

The neocon worldview has been brutally falsified by the failure of Western interventions to produce modern liberal societies. It has also been falsified by the failure of immigrants to assimilate to Western societies, and by growing problems within modern civilization, such as the collapse of fertility and the breakdown of the family.

The withdrawal from Afghanistan is not significant for military or economic reasons. It is significant for cultural reasons. Afghanistan shows that modern liberalism is not the end of history, but is a historical dead end. It shows that moral progress (defined by modern Western standards of morality) is not the driving force of history. It shows that the West, in spite of its military superiority, is weak in many ways.

Most people in the West are blissfully ignorant of these things. Like the man clinging to the airplane, they are looking forward to a better future.