> The flaw in that logic is that, if it weren't for the people who develop lethal weapons for the bullies, we wouldn't have to fear the bullies.
False. Bullies are a problem even if no one has weapons beyond what can be grabbed and used from the environment without any invention. Heck, bullies are a problem if everyone just has the weapons built in to their bodies.
> But I wonder if you could develop defense capability to make your country unattackable.
Not without incidentally developing a huge edge in offensive weapons that would make you attackable when it inevitably diffused to others. Uniquely defensive technology mostly doesn't exist.
> Not by threat of retaliation, but for example by much much stronger missile defense.
Much better interceptor missiles mean the technology for much better missiles generally. Directed energy interception means direct energy weapons. Hypervelocity kinetic interceptors are general purpose hypervelocity kinetic weapons.
> Or by educating ("indoctrinating") your own population, so that an occupier would not find a single collaborator?
That kind of indoctrination can also be used offensively, but the enemy doesn't need collaborators to attack you. (They might need it to conquer without genocide, but attackers willing to commit genocide for land are not unheard of, nor are attackers whose goal isn't conquest.)
> Or by mining your own infrastructure, and giving every citizen basic combat training (a bit like the swiss)?
Mining your infrastructure is itself creating a vulnerability to certain kinds of attacks.
> Or by fostering a world-wide political transformation that is designed to prevent wars from happening at all?
It's been tried, repeatedly. The League of Nations, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the UN. It’ll be nice if someone ever finds the “one wired trick to prevent war forever”, but it seems distinctly improbable and particularly suicidal to bank your defense on the ability to find it.
False. Bullies are a problem even if no one has weapons beyond what can be grabbed and used from the environment without any invention. Heck, bullies are a problem if everyone just has the weapons built in to their bodies.
> But I wonder if you could develop defense capability to make your country unattackable.
Not without incidentally developing a huge edge in offensive weapons that would make you attackable when it inevitably diffused to others. Uniquely defensive technology mostly doesn't exist.
> Not by threat of retaliation, but for example by much much stronger missile defense.
Much better interceptor missiles mean the technology for much better missiles generally. Directed energy interception means direct energy weapons. Hypervelocity kinetic interceptors are general purpose hypervelocity kinetic weapons.
> Or by educating ("indoctrinating") your own population, so that an occupier would not find a single collaborator?
That kind of indoctrination can also be used offensively, but the enemy doesn't need collaborators to attack you. (They might need it to conquer without genocide, but attackers willing to commit genocide for land are not unheard of, nor are attackers whose goal isn't conquest.)
> Or by mining your own infrastructure, and giving every citizen basic combat training (a bit like the swiss)?
Mining your infrastructure is itself creating a vulnerability to certain kinds of attacks.
> Or by fostering a world-wide political transformation that is designed to prevent wars from happening at all?
It's been tried, repeatedly. The League of Nations, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the UN. It’ll be nice if someone ever finds the “one wired trick to prevent war forever”, but it seems distinctly improbable and particularly suicidal to bank your defense on the ability to find it.