Wealthy societies have always assumed that their wealth would guarantee them strategic victory. With wealth came the belief that its holder was imbued with superior wisdom, regardless of reality.
And what does that mean for the next era of strategic alliances? A new NATO? A new period of diminished cooperation between the US and Mexico, the US and European NATO, and so on?
Perhaps the “experiment” in universal, forced literacy, has been a failure, an historical blip. Literacy is in retreat because of technology and because inquiring minds challenge leadership patterns. Yet intellectual capacity— signified by literacy— determines strategic success. What is to be done?
