Quote:
Originally Posted by Anh_Minh
I said "solid". Europe, for example, has big troubles acting as one.
And as for the American powerblock - I haven't exactly noticed the complete submission of South America to the US.
Oh, and what about Russia and China? What do we make of them?
And Middle East isn't irrelevant. Why do you think the Gulf Wars happened? I don't know what you mean by "as an area", or why you mentioned it at all. I was just pointing out that, whereas today's big countries make all kinds of plays to assert their influences on the Middle Eastern countries and their oil reserves, in 00, nobody really cares about what happens there. They have no oil anymore, and people have learnt to make do without anyway.
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The Gulf wars happened because outsiders actually
cared about stability in the area, compared to other equally war-torn places like Africa. The fighting started before oil was valuable, and it continued in 00 even when oil ceased to be valuable. The foreign interests merely stopped interfering in 00 without energy interests, as such everything in the area went back to small scale killings.
Th Middle East in 00 is exactly the Middle East it always had been. Once upon a time it was wealthy because of its once-fertile lands. Then it was wealthy because of the silk and spice routes between East and West. And currently it is wealthy because of oil. But conflict had always been there. The amount of money in the economy merely alter the scale of fighting.
The current 00 Middle East is poor. But the fighting continued, because the feuds had been going on since before even the discovery of oil. This is
consistent with our world.
The Middle East isn't unimportant, exactly; every piece of land on the Earth has value. However, the nature of local politics and instability means outsiders wouldn't want to get involved unless they feel they absolutely
had to. If people don't care for it, then it is unimportant and irrelevant. (When is the last time you seriously considered how instability in nations like Ethiopia might affect your nation?)