> But I'm afraid they are as clever as we, and that they are behaving
> rationally and with foresight.
It has nothing to do with being smart. It's that we, the Leftists and progressives of the world (loosely defined as, human beings who believe solidarity, justice, and peace have priority before profits, passports and war), are not suicidal.
But *they* are. Everything the political and economic elites of this Empire have done over the last 35 years -- trillion dollar failed colonial wars, trillion dollar military-industrial/prison-carceral boondoggles, trillion dollar speculations followed by trillion dollar bankster bailouts -- has objectively accelerated the destruction of the US Empire. We're headed for a slightly upscale version of the Soviet collapse, replete with a failed war on Afghanistan and Gulf-o-nobyl.
> The State Department may have said it 60 years ago, but that in itself
> doesn't make it less true that Mideast energy resources are "the world's
> greatest material prize,"
Only partly true 60 years ago -- oil is useful only insofar as it powers machines -- but radically untrue today. The greatest material prize in the 21st century is having a world-class eco-developmental state.
-- DRR