I mostly agree with your writings, my comment was mostly a reply to Barnett :-)
Also, empirically: military power is already quite concentrated—modern militaries are not that large but would be able to pacify much larger popular unrest, if they had the will to do so.
This seems like missing the point a bit. For example, Russia right now is trying to stimulate population growth to get more soldiers. It needs people to shoot the guns. That’s the deciding factor of modernity to me, and kicking it out will lead to bad things. The fact that Russia can pacify internal unrest (which is also true) doesn’t affect the thesis much.
I mostly agree with your writings, my comment was mostly a reply to Barnett :-)
This seems like missing the point a bit. For example, Russia right now is trying to stimulate population growth to get more soldiers. It needs people to shoot the guns. That’s the deciding factor of modernity to me, and kicking it out will lead to bad things. The fact that Russia can pacify internal unrest (which is also true) doesn’t affect the thesis much.