Bottom line: If you stick to a backward political system, a foreign military technology may well be created to thwart the system on which your life depends.
Just like nukes, we have to be ready to use the most sophisticated voting devices in order to elect representatives able to resist international pressures.
I rather think that global capitalism is the engine that drives factitious, short-term prosperity for the few and real cumulative misery for the billions.
I myself see also the two Canadian Communist Parties in the mix since it becomes more and more obvious that global capitalism and global cataclysms are closing linked.