alt Hacker NewsCase in point : if you had the biggest military in the world, and no one to credibly oppose you, you'd have a lot of arguments to convince everyone that your bank account is actually full.
Lesson 1 of W.Spaniel course on international relationship is that "international order" is the longest running form of anarchy.
Pray you stay on the good side of the Emperor closest to your home.
It's a good thing the current emperor is old - at least we have patience and trusting biology as an option. Successions are often messy, and I don't see Emperor Trump as the kind to cautiously pick his heir.
That's easily written if you're in the country that benefits most from that situation, not so easily in other countries.
The entire post-WWII system with the UN and international law was an attempt to change this.