Aren't most/all materials much stronger in tensile load than compressive loads, because of buckling anomalies?
Buckling is not a material failure, it's a structural failure. In pure buckling [0], the strength of the material is not actually a factor in whether something buckles or not. In most cases, material failure does occur as a side effect of the buckling, but not always. (The material's stiffness does matter, though. All else equal, something that's more flexible will buckle sooner than something stiff.)
Rope.