> Do you think those natural resources would have been taken advantage of as well in some other system?

What I mean is those factors can obviously effect a country's success. And can be argued that that do much more easier than arguing about religion or ideology.

Similarly it is easier to argue that proper nutrition, sleep, drug usage etc. can effect an athlete's performance very positively. But you would find it much harder to argue on their religion, place they live, how wealthy were their family etc.

As another example I think it is pretty easy to argue that the Jewish scientists going to US because of Hitler was a massive gain for US and a massive loss for Germany. And there are so many concrete factors like this that, all things considered, ideology seems irrelevant in comparison.

You might say "this is all because US is capitalist in the first place". I want to point out how similar this kind of thinking is to the way some religious people think and how inconsequential it is in real world.