The conquests of yesterday were conquests of land, property, and other valuables. The people were used as slaves, the land was used for agriculture, and the property was used as war booty. With these riches, a nation was able to improve its overall quality of life, and reinforce itself for further conquests. Some of these conquests still take place. The building of Israeli settlements is one example.
But most of the conquests of today are conquests over people and minds. These are the most valuable resources. A young, educated, hard-working person is more valuable than land or gold. Such a person pays taxes, keeps businesses alive, creates jobs; and may even create a company, an industry, a service, a technological advancement, a scientific advancement, or a new discovery. He or she does this over a period of many decades, and each person spends and creates hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars for the country they live in.
The person may also become an ambassador of your nation's ideals to other peoples. They become a walking, flying advertisement of that nation's principles. Soft power.
This new form of conquest began roughly after the Second World war, and it has made the West immensely rich by the 1990s onward. Just before the late 1990s, the West had its race riots, its lynchings, its Protestant-Catholic tensions in Ireland, its Quebecois and Irish armed separatists, its Jim Jones and other cults, and its serial killers.
The U.S. alone accounts for 30% of the world's wealth (Russia accounts for less than 1%). So much of this wealth is domestic in origin. The U.S. government makes 3 trillion dollars per year on taxes alone.
So while we campaign against racism and immigration policies in the U.S., look in our own backyard. How many of us could become citizens of the Gulf countries? Almost none. How many of us would thrive as black Muslims in the Arab, Turkic, Persian, or Desi world? I don't even need to ask.
Even Muslim countries with low birth rates and aging populations make it very hard or impossible to immigrate, gain citizenship, and be treated equally to everyone. And yet, that is where the money is today. A young, educated, hard-working person is more valuable than land, gold, oil, or uranium.
As the global skirmish has changed, the Muslim world's strategy must change too. Small, nationalist states do us little good, and instead they do much harm.
