Sublime

If every country depended upon foreign suppliers and customers, the web of mutual dependence would be too strong to break.

as knowledge became the most important economic resource, the profitability of war declined and wars became increasingly restricted to those parts of the world – such as the Middle East and Central Africa – where the economies are still old-fashioned material-based economies.

Europe was almost always a loose-knit ‘confederation’ of culturally similar states in whose mutual relations economic strength was only one of several important variables. Religious affiliation, dynastic allegiance, ideology and ethnic cohesion interacted unpredictably with economic forces to ensure the survival of some political and cultural units

“Capitalism has won the economic war, but it has not yet won the moral war.”29

the promise of postapartheid South Africa has not been realized. For its part, Nigeria was a British colony for a century before gaining its independence in 1960. The country’s subsequent history can only be described as deeply troubled; its initial decades were marked by civil war, secessionist challenges, and military rule. Its politics seem to h

ideology, ignorance, and inertia—the three I’s—on the part of the expert, the aid worker, or the local policy maker, often explain why policies fail and why aid does not have the effect it should.