"'Keep them well, and then call virtue to account' - this is written on the banner that they raise against you, and under which your temple is demolished."
The words of Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor ring with particular relevance in light of the events in Afghanistan. Although the Inquisitor is not a positive figure at all (in fact!), his figure is unavoidable in literary history. With the help of the character, Dostoevsky highlights the fact that even the purest and most idealistic principles in the world cannot prevail if there is no broad legitimacy behind them. Legitimation is only created when the given principles benefit the wider masses.
Perhaps this is precisely the most important lesson from the collapse of Afghanistan and the numerous democracy export failures of recent years. "Keep them well, and then call for virtue" - as if this is what was written on the banner of the Taliban forces marching against the United States and its Western allies. Or even more to those who surrendered to the Taliban without resistance.
The term "democracy export" actually means the export of liberal democracy. From there, the situation gets complicated, as there is also a wide-ranging debate about what liberal democracy is, what democracy is, and what liberalism is. These disputes cannot be outlined here and now, let alone decided, so it is better to look at the facts.
There are examples of successful democracy exports, the literature typically mentions Germany and Japan as such. In addition to these examples, countless waves of democratization have already passed through the world, during the third, our country turned from a socialist dictatorship into a democratic, Western-style country. But if we look at the attempts after the 2000s (Iraq, the countries of the Arab Spring, Afghanistan), we see a lot of failed stories. Of course, it is possible to provide counterexamples in relation to individual cases, but in general it seems that while the XX. until the end of the century it made sense to think about exporting democracy, until the 21st In the 20th century, it is no longer possible to find a successfully democratized country. The question arises as to why this might be so.
The political program of liberalism aims to overcome the tension between freedom and equality. This dilemma is easy to see: due to the differences in wealth, complete political equality cannot be created, since the wealthier basically have more tools at their disposal to act according to their interests. Achieving wealth equality would require such a high degree of state intervention that it would eliminate all political equality from the start. Pike caught by a fox.
Political liberalism's solution to this dilemma is that equality of political freedoms must first be ensured in a society, and then along these lines a more equal society will be created from a material point of view, as all obstacles will be removed from individuals. So first the rights, then the growth resulting from equal rights.
I believe that the same assumption is behind the export of liberal democracy. The exporters of liberal democracy, on the other hand, typically think less about the fact that, alongside freedom, economic growth should serve a benchmark If the latter condition is not met, the democracy export project has not been or can be successful.
Let's just look at the examples of schools in Germany and Japan! Here, liberal democracy built along the lines of democracy export also brought unprecedented economic growth, and this also legitimized the new political system. It is no coincidence that liberalism enjoys such prestige in these countries.
However, without prosperity, we call virtue unfounded - paraphrasing Dostoyevsky's lines. We, Hungarians, also experienced this lesson after the system change, when market liberalization in the early years brought an unimaginable economic and standard of living decline to the citizens. We believed that the future was the widest possible reduction of state competences. And when we had to do something against the unfavorable trends, then - due to the lack of a strong state - we had no tools in our hands. At that time, laissez-faire economic policy and the reduction of state involvement represented the dominant Western model. And as it turned out, accepting this sample is not necessarily to our benefit. It is no coincidence that although Hungarian society professes liberal values, liberalism itself has become a curse word at home, a synonym for degradation.
While thirty years ago the number one export product of the West was neoliberal economic policy, today – thanks to the advance of the progressive left in the West – this has been replaced by LGBT rights and the so-called gender theory. These are the ideas that could not be further from the Afghan society. But the failure of the experiment cannot be attributed to this fact alone. I am sure that more Afghan civilians and soldiers would have been willing to fight for modern Afghanistan if the past twenty years had improved the living conditions of the masses. That is, if Western principles had benefited the Afghan society, and the vast majority of Afghans would have been the winners of the processes of the two decades.
However, in this sense, the American side handled the export of its values in a doctrinaire manner. Even before its ugly exit, the US Embassy in Kabul posted a rainbow flag in honor of Pride Month. Don't get me wrong, I think it is possible to have a meaningful debate about whether the expansion of rights that the LGBT movement deems desirable is good or bad for a society. However, it must be seen that this is a discussion of Western welfare societies. In a country where the question of whether the youngest child of a family can study and thus get better opportunities, the LGBT rights debate is incomprehensible, inadequate and insignificant. In the meantime, the doctrinaire emphasis on principles prevented the export of democracy from bearing the expected fruit and providing a better life for the citizens of Afghanistan.
So, the answer to the question posed a few paragraphs earlier, namely why the XXI. democracy exports of the 20th century, essentially this.
The export of democracy turned from a pragmatic task into an ideological war, the goals and means of democratization were exchanged. Unfortunately, under such circumstances, the effect of the process is also the opposite. Not only did the military occupation of the country bring no recovery, but the chaos after the withdrawal is perhaps even greater than before.
The lessons are available to the whole world, as well as to us Hungarians. The United States undermines its own credibility by exporting its own internal disputes alongside democracy, then abandoning its former allies after guaranteed failure.
And we Hungarians have to learn that if we cannot measure foreign ideas on the scale of our own values, then Hungary too can easily enter the path of destabilization.
