In one of my classes last week a fair amount of people thought America should dearm and get rid of its military and other forces. While I do think this is a horrible idea I am genuinely curious as to how past attempts of doing this have turned out in history. Has such an attempt succeeded without the country getting crushed? Sorry if this is too broad of a question.
There are 16 countries with no standing army currently, although they are all much smaller than the USA. There are several countries which currently have very limited defence forces, such as iceland and japan. Japan after WW2 is probably the closest example to what you're suggesting, as it was highly militaristic, imperialistic and expansionist nation with significant armed forces, but after WW2 officially adopted a pacifist constitution. Japan flourished in the second part of the 20th Century, but that is largely due to the large US military presence which would defend it from any Chinese or Soviet aggression.