Time-proven way of influencing decisions made by other countries is having a strong army. Recently it has gone slightly out of fashion, but the general principle still holds. Those without power are not reckoned with.
Of course not. The point is to have a strong BATNA, as negotiations people put it. The USA is actually a great example of this principle. Their military spending is the biggest in the world. What for? Do they intend to eradicate all other nations so that only Americans remain? I hope not. More probably, they spend all these resources because they don't like it when other nations tell them what to do.
