Switzerland has an alternative to a standing army.
And, as the other commenter pointed out, the Industrial complex was created from scratch during WWII, which is clearly an argument that it didn't need to be Permanent.
Yes, it continued during the Cold War. But that's over. And China or Russia aren't the USSR.
Switzerland would never survive a modern war with a country that had these things and a trained, professional infantry. I don't think their current policy would be at all sustainable without the de-facto protection of the U.S. and Europe.
...which is strange, because both the Afghanis and the Iraqis seemed to have made out just fine against Uncle Sam.
I'd posit that, while very flashy, your advanced weapons don't really do much for taking and holding territory. Indeed, in the modern age of commerce, those weapons so useful in an absolute war become a liability when deployed against an opponent whose riches you seek to seize.
When our country is so rich that it is economically non-viable to wage war on us using these weapons, we then ought shift back away from the military-industrial complex, because we have no need of them.
Despite the protestations to the contrary from the liberals, neither Iraq nor Afghanistan was faced against the U.S. in total war, and even what little attention the U.S. has paid to those conflicts have resulted in relative disaster for the peoples of both nations.
It is true that defeating a dug-in insurgency is no easy task, but there are examples of it being done in history. Unfortunately the methods required are brutal, far worse than anything the U.S. is likely to stomach doing again.
It's kind of apropos you mention economic dominance though; to the extent that resource rights enter into economic stature, a strong military is essential to stopping wars of conquest before they start.
There's a reason China is building up their military so much, once they are strong enough to engage in 'power projection' of their own then little international laws like UNCLOS will be no impediment to them extracting exclusive resource exploitation rights, and probably without much bloodshed (as long as it remains a regional-only conflict, at least).