[spicyramen]

The West normally lacks understanding what hard work, innovation and intelligence is a universal value. During my years at Stanford I had the opportunity to learn about the North Korea nuclear program and how the West never imagine the advancement they produced with very limited resources and without Russian help. Couple of professors visited the nuclear facilities as part of the UN investigation and were shocked with the intelligence, and innovation of Korean engineers. The rest is history and we have now a North Korea with nuclear capabilities

[DeathArrow]

The know how is hardly a secret. Most countries can build a nuclear weapon provided they want to, they are let to do it and they have the raw materials.

But you are right, innovation is not a monopoly of the West.

During the Soviet times USSR had many technological advances, their population was quite literate in sciences, schools were very good and USSR had many teams winning math and physics Olympics.

Having great schools resulted in a large number of scientists and researchers.

The situation repeats with China. They invested a lot in scientific education and it is starting to pay off. Meanwhile, in the West, higher education means discussing politics and being woke.

[mdp2021]

While the core point holds, that scientific literacy pays off, more discrimination is required about the other side of liberal arts:

-- the full realm of human development should be cultivated, and

-- there is a crisis in some broad instances of higher education.

For example, with reference to the parent: you /should/ discuss politics: only, productively.

You do not want your society to be well trained in engineering but underdeveloped in other human qualities fundamental in civilization.

[DeathArrow]

> For example, with reference to the parent: you /should/ discuss politics: only, productively.

I would argue that the scope of education is to improve and spread knowledge.

Politics might be important for society but it is not within the scope of education. Unless you make education about politics and forget knowledge.

[mdp2021]

The purpose of education is the mental refinement of the individual, it scope is dealing with knowledge to that purpose. You deal with knowledge to provide a form of wisdom. Notion and ability go together through education. (Notion without ability would be a dead encyclopedia.)

Political science (say, the comparative advantages of an organizational, or administrative, or voting system vis-a-vis philosophical principles and quantitative methods etc.) is a discipline. It is surely part of education.

When individuals treat political discussions like "hooligans" could treat "Barcelona vs. Arsenal", that is a fault in mental refinement, hence also in education.

[DeathArrow]

>Political science (say, the comparative advantages of an organizational, or administrative, or voting system vis-a-vis philosophical principles and quantitative methods etc.) is a discipline.

Studying politics doesn't mean doing politics. And studying politics is best done solely as a discipline, not instead of other disciplines.

[mdp2021]

Yes. You wrote «discussing politics»: the expression leaves interpretation of "discussing politics with a skewed bias towards that discipline" - still research, investigation, inquire, study, learning -, it is not necessarily read as "doing politics" ("party taken, now let us be active, or loud, or hooligans").

Now: in theory, if your students spent time being loud instead of studying, that should reflect on the marks, should not it? They finally should not pass if doing politics replaced studying. But it is reported of prestigious Athenaeums in USA, and it is also seen and told in Europe, that the "feedback" from the institutions is being lower and lower: even the worse will get the degree. There are horror stories directly told by professors. So, there is a confirmed crisis in education.

But you want your citizens to be fully developed, not """able to count and unable to read""".

[gattilorenz]

> the scope of education is to improve and spread knowledge. Politics might be important for society but it is not within the scope of education

Why is knowledge of politics not knowledge?

[DeathArrow]

>Why is knowledge of politics not knowledge?

It is. But is not the only knowledge needed by a country. Or the most important knowledge.

[jacquesm]

Just look at the incredible amount of knowledge around working Titanium that came from Russia, even to do things that the West had decided were impossible.

[DSingularity]

If you want a world where nations aren’t scrambling to acquire nuclear weapons, then maybe we ought to reign in a hegemonic superpower which has been invading and bombing countries since the end of WW2.

[yholio]

It's simpler than that, really: ban all nuclear weapons and bomb the shit out of anyone who attempts to create them.

This two-tired world, where the rich guys and their cronies have nuclear weapons, while the second grade countries must submit to their wishes, will clearly leave many nations wanting to balance the scale. History has shown that all countries with security problems develop nuclear weapons as soon as they get to a suficient wealth level.

[vbezhenar]

Nuclear weapons are the only thing preventing WW3, WW4 and so on. We're living in an extremely peaceful world, thanks to nuclear weapons.

[DemocracyFTW]

survivor bias; also cf Leibnitz' "best of possible worlds"

[jandrese]

What nuclear weapons are fantastic at preventing are the regular border skirmishes that counties have fought since the invention of territory. It used to be that counties were constantly gaining or losing land to their neighbors and sometimes even ceasing to exist or appearing out of an existing country. Maps would be constantly in flux. These days situations like that are rare. The Russian annexation of Crimea and the breakup of Yugoslavia being the notable exceptions. All of which did not involve nuclear armed powers (at least on the losing side).

[uuidgen]

Pakistan and India would like to disagree.

[jandrese]

Have the maps in Kashmir region changed since the late 90s?

[dragonelite]

Banning nuclear weapons would be suicidal with how aggressive NATO nations are in the global south. Having nuclear weapons is like having a nice sharp dagger on the US throat.

If you really want to make the world a saver place the US should give up its first strike policy. That will calm down the escalation calculation China or Russia have to make.

[BurningPenguin]

Given the behavior of both, Russia and China, i can kinda understand why the US doesn't want to give up that policy.

[iSnow]

IDK, I believe a first-strike policy is inherently destabilizing. Never quite understood the idea. You don't have to abolish nukes to cancel such a policy.

[jacquesm]

Nobody has to make any escalation calculation, that's bad reasoning.

[adventured]

Russia and China are the only two great powers seeking to conquer and annex territory in the world today.

China just recently annexed territory the size of France in the South China Sea. They annexed Hong Kong. Next they want Taiwan. They eagerly want several of Japan's island territories. They very obviously won't stop there, as their military power increases dramatically over the next 10-20 years; they're just getting warmed up on territorial conquest in Asia.

Russia is dead set on destroying Ukraine as it exists today and will proceed to, at a minimum, annex to the Dnieper River. They already annexed Crimea and a large chunk of East Ukraine. They'll attempt to take all of the Black Sea territory of Ukraine, further impoverishing and cutting off the remaining chunk of broken Ukraine post annexation. Further it has its eyes on taking Moldova, either directly or by forced alliance. Taking Ukraine's Black Sea territory will specifically make Moldova easy to conquer; there is no scenario where they don't pursue that combo. It has begun the (likely longer term) process of annexing Belarus, Lukashenko has capitulated into Putin's arms. Nearly any territory in the region that is not in NATO is up for grabs for conquest as far as Russia is concerned. Russia realistically destroyed Georgia, annexing part of the nation, and it's likely to eventually get around to finishing the rest. It would be a big task for the weaker modern Russia, however they'd also really like to figure out how to sink their claws into Kazakhstan and reclaim some of that territory as part of the empire. For Russia ideally there would be some convenient chaos, civil war in Kazakhstan, and Russia would then use border security as an excuse to de facto invade and claim territory that they'd never give back.

Meanwhile, the US has spent most of the post WW2 era trying to maintain global border security, including in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Europe. The US was in Vietnam? It sure was, trying to protect the South from a conquering North; when the US left, the South promptly got conquered (and yet the US is the villain in that story? yeah right). The same fate awaited South Korea, except the US saved them from the conquering North. How much territory did the US annex in Iraq? Zero. How much territory did the US annex in Afghanistan? Zero. It didn't try to take those nations, their territory, or their natural resources.

When was the last time the US tried to conquer and annex Canada or Mexico? Canada sits right next to the world's primary superpower, with an almost entirely unguarded border. Check out Canada's tiny military spending some time. Ask India how their border context is going with China these days; everyone that shares a border with Russia or China is terrified of their territorial ambitions.

While the US has been a superpower during the post WW2 years, how many nations has it annexed? Right.

[iSnow]

>Russia and China are the only two great powers seeking to conquer and annex territory in the world today.

Well, I would respectfully disagree with the "conquer" part. Since the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, that sounds really hollow.

[rbanffy]

Oh, but that’s not “conquering”. That’s “liberating”, the same way the US sponsored puppet violent dictatorships in Latin America that “saved” those countries from becoming “communist dictatorships”.

[sofixa]

You're pretty wrong about Vietnam. The US got involved to avoid the communists, the most legitimate entity in Vietnam, the one that fought the Japanese and French and which liberated the country from taking control. If the US doesn't intervene, there is never a South Vietnam.

What you described is roughly how things went down in Korea, so maybe you just confused the two.

US sponsored coups and wars, often in favour of downright terrible people (like Pinochet) weren't for "global border security", but for power, resource and against anything vaguely leftist.

[nix23]

>The US was in Vietnam? It sure was, trying to protect the South from a conquering North

Sorry but you are dead wrong about the Ukraine, and especially about Vietnam, the US feared the rise of Communism and by that loosing control over Vietnam.

[d3vmax]

They may hot have had Russian help, but they did get help from Pakistan.

"By 2002, Pakistan had admitted that North Korea had gained access to Pakistan's nuclear technology in the late 1990s."

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/10/11/aq-khan-pakistan-north-...