Oil and resources in general are only useful to societies that know how to use them properly. To many countries, oil is a curse: http://dean2004.blogspot.com/2

Oil and resources in general are only useful to societies that know how to use them properly. To many countries, oil is a curse: http://dean2004.blogspot.com/2009/02/zakaria-on-curse-of-oil-wealth.html http://dean2004.blogspot.com/2009/02/zakaria-on-curse-of-oil... It's like chess, checkers, risk, go, Starcraft, etc. You can put a crappy player in a great position on the board, giving them great "resources". But a significantly better player will often still be able to win. Compare North Korea to South Korea. Same culture, same geography, same genetic pool -- but as a society the North Koreans went horribly horribly wrong. North Koreans went with a political and economic philosophy (communism) that was and is far inferior to capitalism. That's my fundamental disagreement with this article. Human intellect driven by forces in the culture and society have a great more to do with a country's "importance" on the geopolitical stage than resources.