Wednesday, October 1, 2008 Free Headline Alerts
By Lev Navrozov
After Japan’s unconditional surrender in 1945 as a result of the U.S. destruction of two Japanese cities by atom bombs, produced by the U.S. “Manhattan Project,” it became clear that the outcome of a war is now decided not by the number and quality of soldiers, but by the number and quality of scientists and engineers able to develop the most advanced new weapons.
As an example of a possible war enemy today, let me take not Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iran, but China, left outside McCain-Obama chatter. Here is an article in front of me produced, on the basis of China’s Statistical Yearbook of 2005, by AFAR (Association for Asian Research). Nothing secret or military! The “Yearbook” is available in the New York Public Library, and the article is amicably entitled “China’s Revolution in Higher Education.”
Of course! Education is growing in the USA as well. According to The New York Times Almanac of Research of 2007, p. 366, the number of Americans who completed at least four years of college increased from 17 percent in 1980 to 27.7 percent in 2005. More than by 10 percent in 25 years! In the AFAR article we read (p. 2 of 4) that the “number of post-graduate students in China’s higher education institutions increased from 10,934 in 1978 to 819,896 in 2004,” that is 75 times, or by 7400 percent, in about 25 years.
According to the AFAR study (p. 2 of 4): “In 2004, more than one million Chinese students successfully completed their undergraduate study in engineering (over 812,000) and science (over 207,000).”
AFAR shyly admits (p. 2 of 4) that “China is still considerably weaker in humanities and especially in social sciences and law”:
As a matter of fact, the China Statistical Yearbook does not provide any data on sociology, anthropology, political science, international relations, demography, statistics or religion. History attracts 0.5 percent of all students and Philosophy 0.1 percent.
Of course! One “historian” and one “philosopher” are sufficient for radio and TV programs, arguing that China is the world’s freest society, and ere long all its members will be the world’s richest (and happiest) people.
China’s goal is to collect the largest number of scientists and engineers in a kind of multiple Manhattan Projects developing all possible post-nuclear superweapons capable of destroying not just two cities (as did U.S. atom bombs in Japan), but the whole of the United States, including McCain, Obama, or their ilk, arguing about whether the United States should withdraw from Iraq or strike Iran and Afghanistan.
From 1933 to 1945, the USA was lucky: as a result of anti-Semitism in Germany and later in Italy, these countries lost several scientists of genius, who emigrated to the United States and took part in the development of the nuclear bomb ahead of Germany.
Nowadays, the attitude of the free West to China is so benign that China can employ at sufficiently high salaries those foreign scientists of genius who may be useful for the development of post-nuclear superweapons.
Besides, the Chinese students study abroad, learning what is important for the development of post-nuclear superweapons. According to the AFAR article (p. 3 of 4), the “annual average” of Chinese students going to study abroad in 2000-2004 “was 18,923, compared to 2,631 for 1978-1999.”
The money? According to the AFAR article (p. 3 of 4), “government allocations for science and research . . . jumped over 22 times, from the equivalent of US $660 million in 1978 to US $14.6 billion in 2004.”
The free West will live as long as it is necessary for China to become as superior militarily to the free West as the United States became superior to Japan in 1945 just owing to one superior weapon. Meanwhile, the U.S. presidential nominees and President George W. Bush can chatter away about how Saddam Hussein was going to produce in 2002 an honest-to-goodness atom bomb, no worse than the U.S. atom bomb of 1945, and about how Iran is contemplating its production of such a bomb.
After 8 years of his presidency, the rating of George W. Bush is lower than that of any former U.S. president. How can McCain or Obama be expected to be better than George W. Bush, fighting Iraq (population 26 million, with only one third of them being Sunnis) and expressing his benevolence to China (population 1.3 billion, becoming a post-nuclear military machine, more superior to the United States qualitatively, not only quantitatively, than the United States was superior to Japan in 1945)?
The key to survival of a country in the 21st century is the human mind. But Philistine twaddle, conformity, and lack of interest in anything except his or her own money have become characteristic of the public life and culture in the free West. Is a single thinker heard in the West today? A mediocrity assumes that he or she is revealing the truth by repeating what millions of other mediocrities repeat. Mass communications media have become the cultivators of Philistine twaddle.
In my first articles published in the West (in “Commentary” magazine), I quoted Winston Churchill’s speech in British parliament when some delegates had remarked that Stalin was grabbing Eastern Europe under the pretext of liberating it from Hitler. Prime Minister Churchill immediately declared that he would not allow to speak in his presence so disrespectfully about “Marshal Stalin.” And so on. A panegyric to Stalin. Why? This was fashionable, Churchill conformed, and that was expected. But the fashion was soon gone. And he became quickly a ruthless critic of Stalin. His Stalinist speech (and my “Commentary” quotation of it) were immediately forgotten.
If a conformist panegyric to Stalin was all right for Churchill, an almost monumental figure, what can be expected of much less impressive political figures in the free West today?