You're right on that its a choice, but everything in this game is about choices anyways. You can hoard because you want to be at max strength/D for landgrabbing, but now its necessary to be prepared for the possibility of AA or whatever because everything else is wide open. DEAD decides they want to use the backdoor on said weaknesses, but are prepared for the consequence of war because of what they did. In my opinion, that's how it should be. If you were someone who was hit, be mad if you were the one who got hit (its a choice after all too!), but also have the spine to accept that part of that reason was because of the lack of difficulty there was in softening up the state.
Even if you go inf or bust, other things have to go right if you want to be up top anyways (GB racing comes to mind). No one is stopping a group from being anti-war. Heck, its what a majority of the 'bean counters' are since they don't like the AAs and want to retaliate because of it. But then what do you have to do in order to retal? What would you have to do to prevent the war state hoarders from breaking you? War. Pot, meet kettle.
Its too easy to spin either side of the argument to fit individual tastes. For me, its all about having fun, the rest of you be ****ed. >:B
One thing that rubs me the wrong way about this thread is how loosely suicider is tossed around. Sure, you'll die in war, but its not certain death of 1vs a nation like in a true suicide where one state dumps 300/100 (if he's lucky) turns on a target that's exposed, knowing he's dust afterwards. The war last set certainly cut the head off on that perspective.