Which creates an environment that extremist groups use to successfully radicalize large groups of people frustrated by the rampant & immoral corruption. (At least that was my biggest takeaway)

In turn these Extremist groups are funded by the CIA and Pentagon and fight each other.

http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-cia-pentagon-i...

It's the circle of (a corrupt) life ...

I.e. if extremism is flammable and tends to explode, the US figured out how to harness it and built an internal combustion engine fueled by it...

the "machine", man

I have a heuristic principle that corruption is endemic to resource extraction industries (oil, gas, timber, mining). Getting something for nothing (and externalizing the costs) is somewhat the premise of the whole enterprise.

Not for big extraction corporations that have a lot of surface area to fire at. The downside risk is just too great.

This being said, the combination of an African-style failed state (or outright kleptocracy) and rich natural resources creates a special case of the Resource Curse.

When it comes to a stable legal system and low corruption, Americans were born on third base and think they hit a triple.

Some say the company was causing corruption rather than merely bowing to it:

> The Unaoil emails don’t show corrupt third-world kleptocracies shaking down helpless Western corporations. They show the opposite: Unaoil, working for Western companies, is seen slowly corrupting foreign officials, starting off with small gifts and shopping sprees and eventually hooking them on major graft.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/unaoil-bribery-scanda...

Seems to be the same way that other countries get people to turn on their own in espionage. First ask for something small and insignificant, then increase the scale and scope of the item bit by bit until "giving away top secret information" is not really seen as a large step.

> Vast amounts of money for natural resources bring about vast corruption in unstable states.

Only in unstable states? Has oil money corrupted the United States federal, state, and local governments at all?