Armed force superiority is a requisite for maintaining order, which is a valuable good in and of itself, but the country also needs to produce goods themselves (such as research, medicines, technology, media) which is greatly enabled by a large population that has a higher than average level of trust between each other.

I would even assume the latter is far more difficult to create than the armed forces, and only arises from a perfect storm situation. And it feels like it’s in a downward trajectory, but hopefully that is not true or will reverse.