2. Oil and the Americas There is oil in areas from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico to Venezuela, and then combine it with Brazilian ethanol, the Americas could have a power unsurpassed by the rest of the world. However, North America has taken Central and South America for granted and therefore they have some power of their own but not nearly the amount they could have if they would join forces with their neighbors. I found it interesting that Latin America could be a power house on their own if they took the initiative but they have for many years been forced around by other countries and therefore have been kept from reaching their full potential.
3. Iran The Shah of Iran, America’s most loyal ally at the time used the profits of the oil boom of the 1970’s to continue to buy weapons from the U.S. This in turn further alienated Iran and its people past a breaking point. In the 1970’s, Iran had a revolution that was so unpredicted and it had the same GDP as Spain and compared itself to the first-world Germany.
4. India A devastating tsunami in 2004 that hit India caused Africa, Arabia, and Iran to send their natural resources eastward and it causes a booming market and export for Asia India was the most powerful territory between the Suez Canal and the Straights of Malacca, but its influence died with the British Raj. India had declared itself and the United States to be the “twin towers of democracy”.
5. Burma/Myanmar Burma (now Myanmar) has been an isolated and underdeveloped society for decades. Its location on the Bay of Bengal makes it a crucial strategic littoral for China to circumvent the Straights of Malacca. It is the world’s only militant Buddhist state. Burma has all but become a Chinese provenience.
6. Egypt Egypt was once the center of world teaching. It had a library called the Great Library of Alexandria with over 700,000 scrolls. This ended when the library burned down by a fire cause by Roman Barbarianism. I always knew that Egypt was the site of much history with the pharaohs and the pyramids, I just never knew it was the center for world learning.
