“We didn’t push the Russians to intervene,

but we knowingly increased the probability

that they would...That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap ... The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter “We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War.”

–Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security

Adviser to Jimmy Carter, talking in 1998

Perhaps, the greatest dichotomy to ponder over the previous century is the Communist- Capitalist divide between the previous Soviet Union and the United States. Today marks the day in 1989, when the Soviet Union pulled out of the 9 year long intervention within Afghanistan. This holds relevant importance for Pakistan as well, since we were the United States proxy to train the widely hailed freedom fighters at the time, called the Afghan Mujahideen. Decades later, we must ask ourselves: Was taking a side worth it? Why give in to the war of both the sides in terms of Capitalism and Communism? The idea should be the value of hybridist systems and a mixture of these two apparent heterogeneous ideas. This will ensure that we can move on from the world order being imposed on us, to what actually suits us for economic growth and development, as done by the South East Asian Tigers, such as South Korea.