system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Star Wars] Why didn't the Republic already have an army before Attack of the Clones?

I could understand it being too small to deal with the Separatist mass-produced battle droid armies, but from what I can gather it seems they had literally nothing except the Jedi and local security forces. How is that possible for a government in charge of most of the galaxy? Shouldn't they have at least *some* conventional military, if only to deal with things like space pirates, droid insurrections, and alien invasions?
gpt
States rights. The Republic was a collection of 'nations' who each handled their own business. In case of disputes they held meetings and voted. You either accepted the resolution or didn't. If you opted to attack someone else with your nation's military, nearby nations might lend a hand to the defender (or not) as we see with Naboo and the Gungans. However, there was not much expectation of the 'Republic' stepping in as an authority figure. 

Each nation had a lot of autonomy. Of course during the war this led to a lot of nobody agreeing to anything. We see this with the assault on Scarif. The Rebellion (Republic adherents) couldn't agree, and it took individual members acting in unison to get something big done.

Federalism and centralized power came with the rise of the Empire. Before that, think of the Republic as more of an agreement between responsible parties rather than it's own autonomous entity.