Pull the trigger on a nuclear weapon and humans are wiped out! Not an option really. If you educate your people and you win the war!
This was not always the case. In the days of the British Empire we had, for many years, an almost total control over world trade. The educated of our society had no interest in bringing education to the poor. Hopefully, because it was remarkably difficult for a poor man to enter the kingdom of wealth, only the best would manage it and therefore support the growth of the the empire.There was competition within a nation between the haves and the havenots.
The world has changed and now the rich of a nation depend upon the competitiveness of their nation and suddenly the rich need the rest of the country to be able to compete with more than just their bare hands or bodies.