>"the amount of warmongering and territorial occupation you can get away with is directly proportional to to your military force and inversely proportional to the willingness of other states to go to war with you as the occupier"

I would also add economic power and ability to inflict painful sanctions to the equation. But were you really expecting anything else? This is how it always worked and the only thing that prevents hot global scale conflicts now I think is the threat of MAD.