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But Mars will be independent the moment they are self sufficient. That will take a long time, but that will be their tea party moment.

Posession and ability to defend territory are what ultimately determines who owns what.

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Not quite, as even when they are independent - a self sustaining colony - they would still not be in the possession of military technologies to fend off Earth actors.

They don't need to. They just need rockets, lots and lots of them. All colonists need is to deny the incoming party the ability to make a successful landing or orbit.. Unless you want to nuke or slam an asteroid into Mars, conventional warfare simply do not work well on the timescales of space travel. Another alternative for the red team is stealth, but our current understanding of metamaterials is nowhere advanced enough for an invisibility coating in the optical spectrum that can hide a spacecraft capable of interplanetary travel. Perhaps they are sufficient for a missile that only needs to make a minimal adjustments to direction.

Ever heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment a.k.a. Rods from Gods?

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