

Then you are incredibly wrong. Creating a siege mentality is literally one of the easiest tricks to make people bond and form a cohesive group. I’d say about half of Europe’s countries exist in large part as “we’re not English/French/German” as much as any real original common identity.
Yeah ok bud, I’ll let the Swiss know they can stop pretending to be a country now that France, Germany and Italy are unlikely to subsume them.
It is absolutely a foundation. Foundations dry and even crack but that doesn’t bring the whole house down if you’ve built something on it. Which in Switzerland’s case is insane rent (to keep the Italians out), mass armament (to keep the Germans out), watch making (to keep the French out), and cowbells (to keep one specific Dutch woman out).