Question

I received the following passage on WhatsApp:
Words written by the great Rabbi David Michael Shmidel, may he live long: "Things I heard from the gaon Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel decades ago
I wrote them down much later, and I cannot reproduce them precisely in his exact wording.
The help of Israel against an enemy that comes upon them is an obligatory war [as explained by Maimonides, Laws of Kings 5:1], and everyone is obligated in it, so it requires explanation why [the sages of the generation] saw fit to exempt yeshiva students at a time when there were such wars.

Three reasons were heard regarding this:
A. They said that in wartime, part of the nation must remain free [for Torah study and prayer] in order to increase merit.
But this is not true, nor is it the Jewish law, and everyone is obligated in a time of distress to stand with their bodies and save from the hand of the oppressor.
And even though they supported this claim from a midrash that this is what they did in the war against Midian [and this appears in Midrash Tanchuma, Matot, and this is its wording: 'A thousand for each tribe, a thousand for each tribe'—some say he sent two thousand from each and every tribe, and some say three thousand from each and every tribe: twelve thousand armed for battle, and twelve thousand to guard the equipment, etc., and twelve thousand for prayer. End of the Midrash Tanchuma] these are nothing but words of aggadic literature, and the Jewish law for future generations is not so; [and furthermore] one does not derive law from midrashim, and everyone is obligated in war.
So there is no support for this at all.
B. That the present army is a place of spiritual trials that one cannot withstand.
This reason is not sufficient to justify our conduct. If this war is indeed, in our eyes, an obligatory war, a war in which we are obligated, then we should have tried to seek ways and exert ourselves to fulfill the commandment incumbent upon us. And since they did not do so, clearly this is not the reason for the exemption.

C. Another reason was heard: that it is necessary to designate and dedicate people to study Torah only, for otherwise, Heaven forbid, Torah would be forgotten from Israel.
The idea in this is true. One does not send to the army people who are needed for their role such that if they stop, the nation cannot endure. Bakers too would not be sent to war if shutting down the bakeries could cause the people to perish from hunger.
This point is true, but it is not sufficient. In the end, if this alone were the reason for the exemption, it would be necessary to examine and estimate how many students are indispensable for the legion of Torah learners. Our outlook, which exempts all Torah students no matter how many they are, with no measure or limit, must perforce come from an additional reason.
And the reason is clear.
The wars waged here, and the army here, are not aimed at saving Jewish lives from an enemy standing ready to destroy them. Their war is [only] over the existence of the state, like the armies of all the gentile states. There is no dispute that this is so; everyone agrees to it. And the difference is clear. A war to save lives and a war for the existence of a state are two completely different things, separate from one another in their essence and in their operations.
And the existence of the state is something in which we have no interest at all. [And everyone understands that] it is neither accepted nor conceivable to force a person to fight for a mission in which he has no interest whatsoever.
The existence of the state adds nothing for us to the purpose for which we are in this world, and therefore we have no interest in it.
It is true that [for example] in the days of King David, of blessed memory, they also used political independence for the service of God, but we have no tradition [or knowledge] of how to do that. From our ancestors we received only how to observe the Torah in exile.
What is good for us is to be under the rule of a decent gentile, and there we will serve our Creator.
[Until we merit redemption through our righteous messiah].
Therefore there is no basis whatsoever to obligate us to participate in an army that acts for the very opposite of this.
([It was also said, perhaps in answer to a question:] And there is no possibility of our going out on our own to fight to save the Jewish people from those who rise to destroy them, because they would prevent us, by force of the power in their hands, from becoming an army of our own.)".
I cannot agree with this reasoning, because I want the state to continue to exist, both for religious reasons and for human reasons.
But assuming a person really does see the existence of the state as a burden, does the Rabbi think there is room for this claim? Of course, this would also mean disconnecting from the state's budgetary support.
And from a halakhic standpoint, is there room to distinguish between a war against an oppressor and a war by a state fighting for its sovereignty?