And a nuclear arsenal roughly the size of the second through fifth largest in the world, combined, and an inventory of main battle tanks roughly equal, quantitatively, to the second through fourth largest in the world, combined, etc.

When a country has outsized relative military capacity vs. relative economic capacity, especially when compared to their immediate neighbors, there is a very strong historical pattern of use or threat of use of the military capacity as a lever to achieve economic and/or territorial aspirations.

It can fail (while there can be a lag time, economic power is eventually transformable into military capacity), but it isn't unusual for it to succeed, or for the eventual failure to be at the end of a long and bloody conflict.