A Hard and Free Lesson from the US/Israel and Iran War for Every Country
A country may not be at war, but must be militarily ready anytime and any day. The big question is: if your country were attacked today, would it have the capacity to defend itself and its citizens?
In an unpredictable world, the threat of aggression, anticipated or sudden is never truly absent. A nation that neglects its defence capabilities does not secure peace; it simply makes itself an easier target for those willing to exploit that vulnerability.
No theoretical framework captures this more precisely than Kenneth Waltz's neorealism. In Theory of International Politics (1979), Waltz argued that the international system is fundamentally anarchical not chaotic, but without any supreme authority to enforce rules or guarantee the security of states. In this structure, no nation can fully outsource its survival. Every state, ultimately, must rely on itself. Waltz called this self-help and it renders military readiness not a political choice, but a structural necessity.
The situation in Iran illustrates that this logic remains stubbornly intact. Decades of diplomacy, multilateral institutions, and economic interdependence have not dissolved it. The UN Security Council can deliberate; treaties can be signed and honored until they are not. When a state perceives a strategic opening or faces an existential threat, it acts on its own calculus, not the international community's.
As Waltz indeed observed: stripped of all pretense, the international system compels every state to place its own survival above all else.
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