How long will humans being killing each other with cylinders of stored energy?
The alternative is strong military posturing in order to deter opportunists from trying their luck attacking you.
Warfare is politics - it's when someone says, 'I must get what I want and talking can't achieve it'. We need political structures that provide solutions through talking, which is the/an origin of courts, democracy, a rules-based international order.
For example, Massachusetts isn't attacking New York any time soon, nor is the US invading Canada or France invading Germany. That has nothing to do with force.
People love to embrace violence these days. It's edgy to be cold, but it's actually very important to understand how humanity actually functions, and how our exceptionally peaceful world has been built.
For example, national laws only work when backed by a credible threat of violence. Arresting people and forcing them to live in a prison or getting executed for breaking a law is an act of violence carried out by all governments.
Unlike ants, humans have no natural enemies, and are unlikely to unless some aliens attack, so humans don't have much need of violence for self-defense from outside, though I suppose you could make an argument that violent weapons can be useful for dealing with asteroid threats. (But even here, it probably makes a lot more sense to use engines to slowly push asteroids into safer orbits than to use bombs.)
If most humans were mindless drones easily controllable by pheromones or physical gesturing, there would be no inter-tribe conflicts either.
Also, it is highly likely that humans do have natural enemies. There is compelling evidence that human beings are evolutionarily predisposed to recognize snakes extremely quickly, faster than almost any other object, and electrically speaking faster than our conscious perception of them due to the immense threat they once posed (and still pose) to humans.