It wasn't a weak military that almost got the Earth Alliance destroyed-
It was. If a human came up to a unfamiliar animal, and then started yelling loudly at it and moving aggressively towards it arms overhead here is 2 things that can happen:
- The animal runs away. Best case.
- The animal attacks.
We would call the human a moron if after getting his gonads mauled, he would demand the extermination of that species. Now sadly there are plenty of moronic humans, but thats beyond the point.
The reason the Minbari decided to attack the humans was pure contrivance (and I could list reasons why), but they could have written a less contrived method of why they decided to exterminate the entire race based apon the actions of a few.
Regardless of what that reason was, the Minbari decided to exterminate the human race based upon the actions of a few. And the only reason they stopped was because they didn't decide to closely inspect their targets up close beforehand.
Even if we go with 'And we try to be hunky dory with the Minbari', its been established that the Minbari are cretins that could be setoff by somebody farting too loudly. If you had that sort of neighbor, I would do everything possible to be ready for another attack by them in case they felt that the humans eyebrows where to fuzzy that day and they needed to cull 75% of them.