"All that boils down to," Cornelia said, "is that strong countries are strong and weak countries are weak. Which was true before." She picked up her phone and began shuffling through pictures. "You know, on the boat trip I took last year, we passed through the Suez Canal. The Bab el Mandeb. The Malacca Strait. All famous choke points to the navigation of the seas. People have been fighting wars over those places for hundreds of years. And when they are not fighting wars they are playing geopolitical chess games around who will control those ‘acupuncture points.’ This is the same. It’s just that some places that most people have never heard of are going to become the Suez Canals of the future. And the great and small powers of the world will have to mark them out on their chessboards and maybe even prepare for conflict. But if you suppose any of that is new, you don’t know history."