Pakistan’s survival, as the shock waves from the Afghan political earthquake spread, depends on the ability of its deeply fractured government, to rise above itself, putting aside its standard civilian-military feuding for short-term advantage, to consider the interests of the long-ignored Pakistani people.

Has the military-intelligence clique in effective control of Pakistan’s government for the last generation finally doomed Pakistan to collapse through its addiction to promoting Islamic extremists such as the Afghan Taliban who just cemented their independence this week? By so easily running the U.S. out of Afghanistan (copying the victory of the previous generation of Taliban over the Soviets), Salafi extremists have now clearly established in Central Asia a degree of independence that has eluded their comrades in the Mideast. The proud but short-sighted generals in Islamabad should be trembling in their polished boots: their erstwhile client “bad boys” have come of age.

It is just barely possible, one must acknowledge, that the Taliban will suddenly hunker down and become focused inward, but this second generation of Taliban has become a generation of worldly, traveled, globally-connected rebels who most likely are now convinced the future is theirs. After all, they have now defeated both superpowers, and what reason do they have to think they might not even tip over the delicately balanced military-intelligence dictatorship that hides in plain sight just behind the shoulders of Pakistani democracy? That disaster would make the Afghan disaster look like nothing more than a bit of heat lightning flashing up in those hills where the Taliban originated (not coincidentally, as a legitimate reform movement protesting the corruption of traditional Afghan politicians). The full collapse of Pakistan into Salafi jihad that its military-intelligence elite has been toying with since even before the days of Musharraf would open the door to equal but opposite Hindu nationalist extremism that Modi has been dreaming of all his life, and the whole of South Asia would face (nuclear) implosion.

The above paragraph admittedly moves fast, skimming the surface of a complex three-dimensional socio-political space. Islamabad claims to have ended its romance with Salafi terror and to have solidified its control over the Pakistani-Afghan border, but what reason would anyone have actually to believe this breathtaking claim, with perhaps one million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, including countless Taliban or related Afghan Salafi militias hidden among them? And Modi’s India is keeping the powder keg of South Asian war packed with explosives by his harsh policy of preventing the Kashmiri people’s freedom of political expression. Throughout Central Asia, the immediate threat of war is simply too useful for the careers of too many politicians to be given up simply in the interests of peace over the long run.

There are several long fuses connected to that Kashmiri powder keg, and now, the fall of Afghanistan into the hands of the Taliban has lit one of the longest. No one can predict how fast it may burn.

Whatever the Senate decides about impeachment, given the revealed discussions between Trump and various members of Congress, a prima facie case of incitement has now been established: time for the FBI to step in. Like anyone, Trump deserves a real trial, “governed, for the most part, by hard rules. Not norms, but rules. Rules of evidence, of procedure, of professional ethics.” [Bharara, Doing Justice, 253.] More importantly, America deserves closure.

President Biden is offering an inspiring message of not just professionalism but renewal of Washington’s moral foundations. For this ambitious agenda to succeed, Biden needs to balance domestic and foreign policy reform. For Biden’s new coinage to be accepted, the two sides of the policy coin will need to be minted from the same metal.

President Biden’s long-overdue call for national unity will need balance to succeed. Biden will need to balance in addressing the needs and aspirations of a wide range of social groups with legitimately distinct perspectives. Biden will also need to balance firmness with sympathy; the desire for truth with the willingness to listen to dissent.

All that may be obvious; what is often less obvious is that all the above applies equally to foreign policy: democracy, conciliation, and mutual sympathy at home do not sit well with a foreign policy of coddling dictators, exploiting the weak, and treating war as the answer. Sooner or later, the chickens of foreign policy abuses of power for short-term convenience come home to roost, subverting the decency of domestic governance. A regime that relies on war internationally will be likely to rely on the suppression of dissent at home. Wars for profit will corrupt domestic politics.

Restoring the balance in domestic affairs will be much easier, much more logical in the context of the simultaneous restoration of balance in foreign affairs. Biden has already taken a great first step by leading the U.S. back into cooperation with global efforts to protect the environment of a planet threatened by climate change. Many more controversial steps will be needed, and they should stand on a foundation incorporating two principles:

1. unilaterally restoring to other states that which the U.S. unilaterally took;

2. holding responsible for their abuses regimes whose behavior has crossed the line.

At the core, a government must decide whether it wishes to be perceived as a trustworthy partner or just a self-serving adversary; it has always been obvious that the former is more effective than the latter, but it has never been more obvious than now, after four years of Washington burning its international bridges. A Biden Administration theme of unity based on respect for others offers a clear contrast with the Trump years but will be much easier to live up to and taken much more seriously by the rest of the world if balanced by a similar reform of U.S. foreign policy.

Viewed from the perspective of complexity theory, the ongoing battle over the fundamental structure of democracy in the U.S. is a clear case of the social co-evolution of two complex-adaptive systems–the political system and the biological system composed of the battle between the COVID-19 virus and the U.S. population. All components of these two systems–virus, human population; political parties, voters–are simultaneously and unpredictably adapting in response to the adaptations of the other components. Come what may, there’s no going back.

Trump’s four-year-long war to destroy our belief in “American values” and to destabilize or politicize the core governing institutions responsible for defending those values—far from being defeated by Biden’s electoral victory—has laid the foundation for a bifurcated society and a bifurcated polity. In place of a united social super-majority governed by two centrist political parties that marginalized progressive and regressive minorities by silencing, sneering at, and ignoring them, U.S. society now consists of two starkly hostile but openly hostile, articulate, organized social constructs incorporating an array of armed militias (including some not just prepared for revolt but openly articulating ideals that constitute a betrayal of the traditional “American values” of discord resolution by discussion in a sociopolitical environment based on the rule of law, respect for adversaries, one-citizen-one-vote). Simultaneously, U.S. governance now consists of two parties seeking mutually incompatible futures, with one of those parties apparently committed to voter fraud (gerrymandering, one-dollar-one-vote, blatantly false allegations, politicization of governing institutions Constitutionally mandated to be independent) as the foundation of its hold on power.

A traditional Jeffersonian, strict Constitutionalist conservative would have a very hard time finding a comfortable resting place in this house divided against itself. The sins of the two old, self-satisfied, elitist parties caused the idealistic American faith in its values—which were being put into practice far too slowly—to be rejected by nearly half the population, thus opening the cultural door to an array of extremists lurking in the shadows of our less perfect union.

The public rhetoric of contempt coupled to the private formation of armed militias looking for excuses to wage open warfare against their opponents is ironically transforming the city on the hill into post-Saddam Iraq. That dark assessment is no more than half the story, however, just as a forecast that COVID-19 will infect everyone and destroy our modern civilization would be only half the story. Although we may not be able to see the future, a wide array of powerful, competing dynamics are now readily apparent. Within the pandemic system, both virus and human immune system co-evolution is already apparent; more broadly, cultural shifts are occurring in response to the disease threat, and society is beginning to face up to the need to improve a wide array of institutions from rural health clinics to the CDC, from meat packing plants to food supply chains. Within the political system, white power militias covertly protected by biased police are provoking the rise of minority power militias; extremist right-wing political rhetoric and efforts to subvert the rule of law are energizing progressive forces and bringing them greater public support.

The extremist political contagion and the pandemic are both complex systems of semi-independent, co-evolving clusters of actors propelling, respectively, the sociopolitical and biological systems along some unpredictable path through a maze of winding, interconnected routes that emerge as possible options for a time and die out without warning as the various underlying dynamics propel the systems along. Today, a mutating virus may be asserting control; tomorrow, the human immune system may reassert its own dominance. Today, the dominant dynamic may appear to be threatening, heavily armed extremists marching down main street; tomorrow, a more politicized younger generation may evoke a resurgence of democratic virtues.

This war of two dynamics (“disaster” vs. “revival”) has played out repeatedly during the tumultuous course of human history. First, things get worse and disaster appears imminent, then hidden dynamics working against the rising tide of disaster gain strength and visibility until the system reaches a tipping point allowing a shifting of the dominant dynamic and a revival: the rising contagion rate declines or the popular mood shifts from confrontational to cooperative. This is a story of competition but should not be thought of as a simple race: the two sides do not necessarily start together, move at the same time, or reach any preordained finish line.

Indeed, the two “sides” may not even both end up in the same place or with their original identities intact…and there is not necessarily any finish line at all. The GOP is transforming from elitist into populist; the Democratic Party from neo-liberal to progressive. Either or both could shatter. At a more profound level, the underlying culture of the whole U.S. population is destabilizing, being torn in opposite directions – part overtly racist and authoritarian, part multi-cultural and egalitarian.

These strains open endless possibilities, and history is littered with failed national experiments – societies that fractured from the strain into multiple new and hostile states. Democracy is a challenging goal at best; democratic theory works only when the society is dedicated to putting effort into its realization.

Complex-adaptive systems are complicated by definition (semi-independent and adaptive parts) and dangerous because the creativity that makes complexity powerful emerges at the limit, when the system is functioning at full throttle (when the freedom of individuals to innovate is maximized but not overdone). What this analogy really means for a complex system is quite different than what it means for a simple system like a motor. Complexity at full throttle may offer the highest returns of creativity but at the cost of pushing the system ever closer to the edge of the unseen cliff. Individual freedom to be creative may be pushed to such an extreme that individuals demand the right to steal from the weak or behave in ways that infect their neighbors. System collapse (think Easter Island, the vanishing of the Mayan Civilization) can be sudden. The challenge of maintaining democracy is hard enough without trying to do it in a time of pandemic. More precisely, the three-year-long Trump Administration effort to undermine the rule of law and the independence of core national institutions had already greatly weakened American democracy even before COVID-19 emerged. It remains to be seen if sabotaging the system and institutions of government will prove to have gone far enough to prevent our coping with the pandemic, i.e., if we end up having to choose between the type of government (democratic or authoritarian) and the outcome of the pandemic (control over the pandemic or social devastation because of its uncontrolled rampage). The voluntary effort of millions to brave the pandemic in order to stand in long lines to vote suggests that a tipping point can be attained sufficient to enable the revitalization of government in time to defeat the pandemic and profound enough to save democracy.

What happens when a national crisis requires Federal leadership for solution but the White House is exploiting the crisis as a political weapon against the American people, transforming the only political institution capable of resolving the crisis into the main enemy? That which constitutes the greatest threat also stimulates the greatest reaction, albeit it with an unpredictable and perhaps fatal delay. Outcome may be unpredictable but rapid change in a highly complex system is a safe bet, much less in a case of two complex systems that are in a head-on collision (e.g, a government simultaneously juggling demands for more justice and stronger efforts to combat a pandemic). Moreover, permanent change is a certainty. When dealing with a complex-adaptive system, the one point you can depend on is that you will not be able to put things back the way they were.

The mutually adapting populations of humans and viruses will adapt as they interact: viruses will mutate, human immune systems will create new defensive capabilities. An analogical evolution will generate a stream of adaptations constantly updating attitudes and behaviors both at the individual and group levels in the political system. Regardless of the rhetoric, the reality is that the pre-Trump GOP will not exist post-Trump nor will the pre-Trump Democratic Party. Racists have learned that they can openly seek to repress minorities; minorities have learned that they will be treated with justice only to the degree that they insist upon it. Police will henceforth have to justify their behavior and see budgets for security balanced against the budgets for social support. Voters have learned that they cannot assume that major American political parties automatically represent the interests of the majority or are led by patriots who believe in American values. Indeed, it is no longer even clear that “American values” remains a term with a clear, broadly accepted definition.

If all this is unsettling, even shocking, streaks of silver lining nonetheless run through these dark clouds. In order to protect Constitutional mandates about the rule of law, we must understand that the rule of law is under attack. In order to insure that elections are both free and effective, we must perceive the efforts of politicians to corrupt the democratic process. In order to enhance social justice, we must recognize the mistreatment of family farmers, industrial workers driven into unemployment by globalization, and poor rural people lacking decent health care. Great progress has been made over the past four years on all these counts simply by the advances in transparency as political efforts to undermine our democracy exposed one flaw after another. The strength of a castle’s ramparts becomes clear only after the castle is attacked. The pandemic is exposing the threat to human health by corrupt politicians who either cover up or exploit disease threats for personal political gain, and now appears likely to provoke the strengthening of the public health system. Similarly, support for authoritarianism, now exposed and intensified, has ironically also intensified support for democracy, equality of opportunity, and rule of law.

U.S. society will not simply “recover” from COVID-19 or from the Trump era. Biologically, culturally, politically, we will need to cope with a new world by behaving differently. We will need new laws to protect the independence of scientific institutions, to hold corrupt politicians responsible for their behavior, to insure the rule of law, to give local officials more resources to cope with crises when central authority falls short, to protect the weak. COVID-19 and authoritarianism both still threaten to flood the house we all live in, yet it is precisely the high visibility of these black storm clouds that may persuade us finally to fix the cracks in the basement wall.

Complexity theory suggests that such a balancing act successfully guiding the interaction of two vast complex-adaptive social systems would constitute an historic achievement. Complex systems at the edge of chaos tend to collapse suddenly: the more intense the crisis, the more complicated the process of restoring the smooth functioning of a system that by definition is complicated since it relies on the self-organized actions of a countless number of semi-independent actors. Complexity theory also underscores that the key, far from being any aspiration to return to “the good old days”–which were not quite as good as the lucky among us thought and are in any case gone forever, is to create a new and better way forward.

For the US, the clearest, most fatal electoral choice in 150 years: liberty, rule of law, science, multicultural equality of opportunity, truth, majority rule plus minority rights, decisions by free and open debate, “city on a hill” leading by example vs autocracy, might makes right, ignorance, racism, fake news, winner take all, decisions by top-down command, “war is the answer” in a world of competing dictators. As for the world, both dictators and societies are holding their breath, waiting to see which way the wind blows.

The issue is not all the little policy debates of the season but the viability of our beliefs as a model for the world. If Biden slips through–and especially if he fails to flip the Senate, that will not stop the global resurgence (in Trump’s footsteps) of autocracy. Democracy in the US must be reaffirmed beyond doubt.