[Icarus]

(12-28-2013 03:47 AM)buja Wrote:  

Small autonomous areas can survive. Take Switzerland. Almost everyone has a gun. They have a comprehensive defense plan to avoid invasion.

Switzerland is a very special case. It is a landlocked country in the Alps, its geography and topography make an invasion extremely difficulty. It is an old, proud country where all males serve in the military, and in which 100,000s of reservists have assault rifles at home. And nationalism motivates people to offer resistance to any invasion.

When you start a new country, how are you going to defend it? Lee Kuan Yew did a magnificent job in Singapore, but he was the only one to have succeeded. You need to create a national identity and nationalistic fervor so that people will want to volunteer to defend your country. If you rely on mercenaries for your defense, you will have trouble. Mercenaries will wait until there's a crisis that makes you need them, then they will charge 10x what the contract says. Because they can extort you like that.

Let us not forget that Monaco depends on France for its national defense.