This is a proposal to seek private and public funding to create a national network of global studies high schools (GSHS). The aim of a network of GSHSs is to enlarge the leadership corps of the next generation and to equip its members to address mounting global challenges to the security, material welfare, and freedoms of the American people, the citizens of open societies everywhere, and those who are striving to join their ranks.

The main theme of this paper is that sustained growth and longer term political stability follow democratization, including the development of civic institutions and the rule of law. Democratization and the rule of law require widespread primary and secondary education that creates a large and economically viable middle class. The secondary theme is that these processes which are education externalities are slow and long delayed. Short term arms control measures and encouragement of some but not excessive expenditures on the military as a percent of each government's budget are also found to be helpful in sustaining democratization and longer run political stability. But it is possible that there is also at the same time some reverse causation; i.e., that democracies spend less on the military.