Currently (August 2021) the predictable consequence of NATO pulling out from Afghanistan is happening. The Taliban are re-taking control. Tragic for those Afghans who do not subscribe to their mediaeval philospophy and methods of government. President Bush Jr went in without any clear long-term plan, certainly not with the concept of nation-building. which was the logical follow-on of the US-led invasion. He did the same in Iraq, with similar results. Americans are not, it seems, disposed to any long-term engagement. But they set themselves up as the beacon of freedom and seek to promote democracy in other countries (forgetting their own domestic gerrymandering). There is a disconnect somewhere there.
Changing deeply conservative attitudes takes generations, and there will still be a minority decades later who cling to the ‘old ways’. Consider ‘honour killings’, carried out by family members on those within the family (mainly women) who are considered to have brought shame on the family/ tribe. In western Europe, those killed are invariably a younger generation of a family who emigrated from a tightly-knit village somewhere; the older females who came along with their menfolk probably do not speak the language of the country they now live in, or understand its culture, and most probably don’t accept it anyway. Within the home, the older generation holds power. Their grandchildren have been fully integrated into that country, hence the culture clash.
We in western European and American society, especially the younger generation, forget that only a couple of generations ago the practice of a couple openly living together without getting married was frowned upon in some levels of society. Homosexuality was a crime, usually punishable with a prison sentence (in the USA, it was only fully decriminalised in 2003). Other modern concepts – equal pay for women doing the same work as men for example – are still battling to achieve full implementation.
So we should not be so surprised when other countries fail to recognise our ways of doing things. They might get around to them – in 100 to 200 years.