Lessons from the East XXIV: Psychology of Conflict – Is it always avoidable?

What drives conflict – Need or Greed?

Why the same playbook is repeated again and again by the aggressor?

Will the Russian – Ukraine Conflict change the course of Europe in a few years?




The Experiment

In 1968, John Calhoun, an ethologist and a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health in Poolesville, Maryland, the United States experimented on rats. This was an attempt to predict the behaviour and social psychology of humans through the behaviour of rodents. The experiment was famously called Universe 25.

He created heaven, paradise, utopian conditions for rats in a specially designed pen with numerous apartments, abundant nesting supplies, unlimited food and water, and protection from predators as well as from disease and weather.

The only constraint was space as it is currently on this planet.

Calhoun introduced four pairs of healthy mice into the pen. For the first 104 days, the mice explored their new habitat, marked their territory, and began nesting. Then, the population began to increase, doubling every 55 days.

It was intriguing that despite of having enough space the rats or the rodents crowded together occupying a smaller one-fourth capacity rather than spreading out across the pen. The rats were always together in groups whether eating, playing or performing any other activity.

By the 315th day of the experiment, the population reached 620 rodents in the Utopian pen. Excess Crowding, discouraged mating, heavily contributing to dropping birth rates. From this point onwards, Universe 25's slowdown in population growth commenced and chaos erupted.

An unsaid social hierarchy emerged. In the male population, the most dominant rats started exhibiting extreme aggression. These mice or rats believed themselves to be “Alpha Mice”, were engaged in wild violent bloodbaths, attacks, rape, and even practiced cannibalism at the expense of their fellow mice. Tragically, these brutal eruptions generally had no clear provocation or motive.

On the other end of the horizon, were the least socially adept mice who completely excluded themselves from mating or thinking about the community or society. They spent their time moving between larger groups of mice, eating and sleeping by themselves. Occasionally, these mice would also fight one another.

Any mice that fell between these groups were rather timid and often became the victims of the violence perpetrated by their more hostile counterparts.

Social roles broke down and females became more aggressive sometimes being often violent with their litters. A few completely withdrew from their motherly responsibilities, ignoring their litters and quitting the mating altogether.

Cannibalism and infanticide followed. By Day 560, the mortality rate jumped to 100% halting the rise in population. A few of the new generation survived with no perception of normalcy.

Eventually, the population of the violent mice was dramatically reduced (violent ones killing each other) but the mice who were not violent, became obsessed with themselves, giving no help in mating, mothering, marking territory or contributing to the community, similar to their female counterparts.

Males became hypersexual, pansexual and, an increasing proportion, homosexual. Calhoun called this juncture “a behavioural sink”. Even, when normal rodents from outside were introduced into this environment, these “socially autistic” animals remained isolated till death.

The Lesson

This bears important lessons for humanity and the way and reasons why wars are fought and the destruction that follows. Despite enough food, no sickness, a utopian environment, perception of everything being great, the rodents turned into their worst behaviour self-destroying themselves.

From Controlled Conditions (the Experiment) to Uncontrolled Conditions (real life)

The History –A country that never be subjugated now submerged in deep chaos

It was repeatedly quoted in Western History that, the Sun never set in British Empire. Yet a country with a large land mass, precious natural resources, and rich history could never be controlled by Union Jack. What the Britishers couldn't do to Afghanistan, the United States did for the country, eventually ruining them and taking them to tatters.
Afghanistan is a country that got its independence (token) in 1919 from the Britishers. It’s interesting that the Britishers never ruled Afghanistan but controlled their foreign policy for 40 years. Post the second Anglo-Afghan War, Afghanistan completely exited from the clutches of British influence.

For the next ~ six decades (the 1920s-1970s) the country will witness rapid growth, and modernization as well as a liberalized economy maintaining respect and harmony with factions having an extreme mindset.

However, greed and zeal to enhance ideological domination from two opposite poles of the cold war imbalanced the fine equilibrium. For the forthcoming decades (from the 1980s onwards), these opposite ideologies of Capitalism and communism worked tirelessly to build influence in Central and South Asia and Afghanistan.

The Undesirable Intervention

Afghanistan was a neutral nation for a long, but Soviet machinery and weapons, and U.S. financial aid couldn’t hold the country’s neutrality and unbiasedness for long. Corruption and some dissatisfied factions within the country started to get influenced by foreign resources.

Progress started to halt by the late 1970s with invasions, bloody coups, and civil war. Young activists, journalists, professors and military commanders were influenced by Marxism whilst Islamists were aided by US financial assistance. Between 1976 and 1979, a series of leadership (murders, deaths, assassinations) changes happened alternately having allegiance to the Soviets and then to the United States.

The US indirect funding led to the emergence of Islamic fundamentalists known as Mujahedeen. As the powers of Mujahedeen rose, so did the tightening of grip by the Soviets. Eventually, in 1979, the newfound instability and the attacks from mujahedeen guerrillas inside the Soviet territory prompted the Soviets to enter Afghanistan. Despite, military prowess, in 1989, the mujahedeen guerrillas ultimately forced the soviets to leave the country. (In 1988, the USSR was dissolved and this was one of the other major reasons for the Soviets exiting the region).

As the soviets exited, chaos engulfed the Afghan Territory. The Weapons, the might and the money made mujahedeen guerrillas warlords leaving the common man on the street even more vulnerable to the US-funded guerrillas.

The Rise of the Taliban

Amid this turmoil, a former Islamist mujahedeen commander, Mullah Mohammad Omar, found a new opportunity to organize an entire generation of young Afghanis living in refugee camps in war-torn Pakistan, leaving their war-torn country. He gave them hope and the possibility of getting their own country back and being run on Islamic principles instead of being puppets of the West.

Taliban in Pashto means Students. Students of Afghan origin studying in Madrasas in Pakistan and in parts of Afghanistan.

He built a new Army of these young Afghani students, who were willing to go to any extent to fight these warlords or mujahedeen. In the next six years (1990 -1996), slowly and steadily starting from Kandahar (the second largest city in Afghanistan), the Taliban took the control of the entire country by overthrowing Mujahedeen.

Taliban was believed to be an alternative to the tumult created by Mujahedeen and thus gained local support. The Talibs were welcomed by the locals in most parts of the war-torn country as they conquered village by village and city by city.

The US continued its efforts to stop and contain the Taliban from outside without being part of the direct conflict. But it received a major jolt with the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud, commander of the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban coalition assassinated by al-Qaeda operatives.

The emergence of Al Qaeda

A little detour on Al-Qaeda - In 1988, Osama bin Laden founded Al Qaeda, with the sole aim of supporting all conflicts for Islamist causes. He collected support from extreme groups across Arab nations and incepted Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia but shortly after moving to Sudan. Al Qaeda and Taliban worked closely as their interests were aligned to perpetuate the rise of Islamic States everywhere across the world implementing Sharia in every territory.
After the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the Al Qaeda fighters got constant support in terms of training, arms, ammunition and shelter from the Taliban and vice-versa.

Following the 1998 bombings of the of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and finally, after 9/11, the US decided to directly conduct military operations in Afghanistan to decimate Taliban and Al Qaeda.

After 20 years the combined Western forces led by the United States left the country in a bigger chaos that is currently known to the world.

Why did this happen to Afghanistan?

Can one's tolerance become a curse from a cure?

Why in Universe 25, the middle path, even-minded, neutral rodents became the victims?

The answer to all three questions lies in the concept of the Paradox of tolerance laid out by Karl Raimund Popper, an Austrian American philosopher.

The paradox of Tolerance states that -

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If one extends unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if one is not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”

In simpler words tolerance beyond a point should turn into intolerance to defend the benign or tolerant nature of oneself, else the intolerant will not only kill the tolerant by the tolerance that was possessed by the tolerant.

This concept is attributed to the ancient Greek Philosopher Plato under the concept of Benevolent Defense.

Both the experiment and the reality of Afghanistan in the light of the Paradox of Tolerance bring important learnings for humans but also throw light on what's happening in Europe and what's in store for Europe.

The Uncanny Similarities of the Past & the Future

Like Afghanistan, Russia has adjoining borders with Ukraine and thus there lie stark similarities between what happened in Afghanistan and what is now happening in Ukraine.

Prelude to Ukraine - Russian Conflict

In 2014, the pro-West and the US-allied government took control over the country nearly after 15 years of Russian influence. In 2014, Russia took control of the strategically important peninsula of Crimea earlier under the control of Ukraine. The conflict & skirmishes continued from 2014 to 2022 in the eastern region of Ukraine – Donbas area.

As the conflict has started in Feb 2022, between Ukraine and Russia, a large number of people from Ukraine left for the other neighbouring countries. As the war got intensified, Ukraine which was under pressure from covid and past discord amongst factions saw the collapse of basic supplies and infrastructure with food and essential necessities becoming scarce in the country.

The War was and is being fought by several ex-military personnel, or guerrilla militants who came to Ukraine from across Europe and are fighting at the behest of Ukraine.

Moving ahead to figure akin and analogous nature of both conflicts one that happened in Afghanistan and the other happening in Ukraine.

        Afghanistan during 1980s (Left); Russia-Ukraine War in 2022 (Right)

For now, the battleground is Ukraine as was the case in Afghanistan and the conflict is again between the same two nations, Russia or the erstwhile Soviet Union and the United States of America.

It’s important to note that it does not matter who wins or who loses the war, but the destruction that one sees in the place or the topography, where the war is fought. This is the single biggest curse of war, the geographical location of the war as we saw in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The aid is coming this time from the US and NATO (The US contributes maximum sums of money as % for NATO) for fighting the War as was the case in Afghanistan and is marred by corruption as was the case in Afghanistan.

Just last week, Kyiv saw a series of resignations and dismissals, many of which are related to allegations of graft. The President of Ukraine's deputy chief of staff, Deputy Defense Minister, Deputy Prosecutor General and five governors of front-line provinces were some of the people who exited their positions on account of corruption charges. It’s believed that Ukraine's Defense Ministry purchased food for the military at prices that were between two and three times higher than those at Kyiv grocery stores.

Furthermore, one is seeing serious fanatic Islamification, of Europe with recent incidents in France, Spain, the UK etc.

Once the war is over between NATO and Russia, what will happen to Ukraine and its education system, its infrastructure, and its energy requirements?

Even before the war, Ukraine was one of the nations growing slowly as compared to the rest of Europe and with this War in their backyard, things have only gone southward.

Poland and Germany are at loggerheads on supporting Ukraine and Euro Zone is already divided on account of this war.

The way Afghanistan is being run by Islamic fundamentalists curtailing all human freedom, Is Ukraine facing a similar future led by plenty of arms, ammunition, and mortar with limited, electricity, food and education.

It's pertinent to bring the quote from Shrimad Bhagavad Geeta (Chapter 2, Verse 38), where Lord Krishna tells Arjuna,

Meaning: Fight for the sake of duty, treating alike happiness and distress, loss and gain, victory and defeat. Fulfilling one’s responsibility in this way, one will never incur sin.

What will happen to Ukraine only time will tell, and will largely depend on the direction that the West will give which is already reeling under the pressure of its weight and past deeds.

But three key learnings emerge from the history of human behaviour, wars and invasion: -

1. One should always try and avoid war at all costs the way Lord Shree Krishna kept on trying till the last minute until a point comes when it becomes inevitable.

2. One should never fight a war with one’s country or land being the battleground. In this matter, one should learn from what the US has done for the last one and a half centuries ensuring neighbouring countries of Mexico and Canada are dependent on the US and acting as a natural shield from any invasion.

3. Weak times create strong men, strong men create strong times, and strong times create weak men. Humans embark on a constant state of prosperity, however when prosperity arrives, Complacency, wickedness and evil prevail, thus during good times, one should prepare for building strength in oneself and one’s resources so that they can come in handy when weak times prevail.