People do not enjoy being poor. They enjoy to be rich and choose to live a poor life. I heard, the USA has deserts, too. And have you seen Dubai recently? Ever

People do not enjoy being poor. They enjoy to be rich and choose to live a poor life. I heard, the USA has deserts, too. And have you seen Dubai recently? Everything can be fixed with enough oil. Another example: Russia. Nobody conquered them either and it is the biggest country on earth with only 143 million inhabitants, so I bet, they find a way to feed them. Still life expectancy for males is 62 over there. Westernization might not sound very romantic to people having it, people not having it, might think very different. Ask people from West and East Germany and you will get the idea. The biggest plus of westernization/capitalism is, that you can not use VW to produce tanks to conquer the world anymore, because they would rather not have their own factories in other countries bombed.