Right now, defeating the US and the West may be far from Xi’s mind, even though he could not say it. Xi has more important concerns. The threat from the West is disappearing, anyway, because of its own decline. What will the post-China and post-Western world look like? And when will we see it?
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?
