In practice, always. It's similar to the claim that during the cold war, US basically controlled USSR economy, and vice versa, and that US won because USSR economy just couldn't keep up.

On smaller scale, this is the (in)famous "fire and motion"[0], which works in business as much as it does in military tactics. Make a move, forcing competitors to respond to it. If you're better at it than them (and lucky), you can choose your moves to make their responses go to your advantage.

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[0] - https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/

Since country A pays for country B's military.