I believe the key is to be a bit more loose with the "guns to butter" analogy. The strategy isn't really to "buy up a fully-trained military" but rather to dire

I believe the key is to be a bit more loose with the "guns to butter" analogy. The strategy isn't really to "buy up a fully-trained military" but rather to direct a large proportion of the GDP to building one at whatever time-scale is required. If you were to do this as an up-and-coming nation (i.e., you've got just a little butter), you'll meet strong resistance from your peers: they know they can counter you by putting your butter pile at risk. But if you first pursue a strategy that gives you a mountain of butter reserves, your peers lose much of the leverage they can exact upon you, and you are free to devote massive resources toward military with minimal "worst-case" economic risk. EDIT: I made another comment about how interesting it is to relate this stuff to strategy board games, and this is an example that converts pretty well: "don't start bludgeoning your neighbors into submission until you're pretty sure that you no longer depend upon them for basic resources." is the strategy. (The alternative strategy would be to constantly be frienemies: take a little, give a little, injure a little the whole game, rather than to have a phase of friendship followed by a phase of foeship).