Why I'm long-term bullish on the Middle East

The author seems to gloss over the fact that the impetus for Europe's "rapid rise" was that they colonized a large fraction of the planet and extracted vast resources. The rise of European living standards, especially initially, was built on a brutal drop in living standards (and just living) for millions of people. Only after that settled down with the help of TWO WORLD WARS did we start to enter the modern "Europe is actually pretty nice" era.

And... it's not really an era now is it? It's just recent history, and as the rise of the AfD and other far right entities show, it's not a given that this the future of Europe. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the reaction to immigration from the MENA region... these relatively modest shocks have gone through the European sociopolitical systems like wildfire.

So I appreciate his optimism, and it is optimism, but it isn't particularly grounded in reality.