[nagasadhu]

Interesting you feel that way... The point i was trying to make was that oil or financial strength seems to have little to do with exploitation of humans and other resources. Colonialism for example. I feel its just the dark side of human civilization and comes from a sense of exceptionalism. The Americans and the colonialists before them just took great pains to varnish their actions with random moral arguments and exceptionalism. Many others didn't bother with the whitewashing.

One curious note is that only the gulf countries fuelled religious extremism with oil. Even then not all of them. None of the other major oil deposit holders like Norway or Russia did anything to further ideology. Political power may be. But not ideology.

[jeffwask]

"One curious note is that only the gulf countries fuelled religious extremism with oil."

I think that depends on how one defines religious extremism. In the Southern United States, Evangelical Christianity has ties to oil barons and oil money throughout the last 100 years.

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history...

[vba616]

Russia...never promoted...ideology...?

Perhaps you could expand on your definition of ideology because this is confusing.

[aliswe]

can you elaborate on the religious extremism part?

[nagasadhu]

A huge part of the Afghan war against the Soviets was funded by private citizens of the gulf. Huge sums of oil money were spent on recruiting religious mercenaries. Saudis spend huge sums annually on exporting wahabi islam overseas. Iran has their version of this arrangement too. The Saudis offered to build mosques all through Europe when asked to do their share for the Syrian refugees. I call this religious extremism. An intolerance of other religions combined with forceful propagation of your own. Somehow muslims in the gulf and other countries feel the need to fight for muslims in other sovereign countries. Never heard of a practising Christian voicing a protest against treatment of Christians in some sovereign Islamic republic. On the other hand i never heard of the Russian orthodox church meddling in the affairs of other countries. The KGB maybe.. but not the church. The distinction being religious ideology vs others. Political islam is unlike political Christianity. Political Christianity died with the crusades. Political islam thrives in the modern age. Mix that with oil money u get a deadly combo. Sure the west has bombed the daylights out of the middle east but again it was for sake of pure financial gain from oil. America is out for global military dominance. That's the political ideology. It is not fighting a crusade which is a religious ideology.