It's a lot about resilience to defeat.

Some states can suffer tremendous losses and yet they can eventually prevail due to their stronger industrial capability in the long run.

That's what allowed the US to defeat the Japanese in WWII. Japan had a capable military apparatus at the start of the war but they were not able to scale their production at the same rate as the much larger US.

The only way for a smaller state to defeat a bigger one is to go all in and win quickly.